


Gold Standard

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alpha Tony, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Arranged Marriage, I Don't Even Know, I just thought this was a neato idea ok, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Obadiah Sucks, Omega T'Challa (Marvel), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Royalty, Tropes, courting, ish, some wavy timelines also, there's some choice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-08-28 14:49:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8450542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: T’Challa sighs, somewhat annoyed with the turn of events in his life as of late. The need to open Wakanda up to the rest of the world is necessary for a number of reasons, T’Challa agreed, but he did not know why that should involve marrying him off. He thought Wakanda was past that particularly dark part of their history where they treated their omegas like cattle more than people but his father’s current plan to integrate them into world politics stated otherwise.*Tony had zero interest in Wakanda, the prince, or anything else in relation to this whole marriage thing. But Obi had insisted, claiming it would be good for the company.





	1. Chapter 1

T’Challa sighs, somewhat annoyed with the turn of events in his life as of late. Shuri, who was usually jealous of his position, now thought this was all very amusing and he did not agree. The need to open Wakanda up to the rest of the world is necessary for a number of reasons, T’Challa agreed, but he did not know why that should involve marrying him off. He _thought_ Wakanda was past that particularly dark part of their history where they treated their omegas like cattle more than people but his father’s current plan to integrate them into world politics stated otherwise.

“Oh stop being dramatic,” Shuri tells him, “it’s all your choice,” she points out.

“Except that I must make one. I do not leave this without getting married to someone- what if all of my choices are awful?” It was a legitimate worry; he had no interest in being treated like a farm animal in some _other_ country because he ended up choosing the least awful, though still awful, of his suitors.

“Marry a man to piss everyone off,” Shuri suggests.

He lets out a sharp laugh, “oh, that would cause a fuss. Then you get stuck carrying on the royal line,” he says. Shuri wrinkles her nose at this but he knows that if she had to she would have children. Typically the child of the first born, meaning T’Challa, would carry on the royal line but he had less interest in children then his sister and unlike her he was not willing to make that sacrifice. The problem with Shuri taking on that responsibility, though, is that she is the product of their father’s second marriage- making her almost illegitimate. T’Challa, by his country’s current standards, would always be the preferred leader and royalty bearer.

“I lied. Be good and marry a woman. To be honest I am surprised you have choices that are not women, I did not see that coming,” she says. Neither did he but he knew his father was going out of his way to try and make him confortable and accommodating for his sexuality was an easy way to do that. But they all knew T’Challa was not supposed to choose a man, that was not in his country’s best interest and he was to always think of Wakanda first, regardless of the consequences to himself. That, according to his father, was his job as future king. To a point he agreed- of course his people should come first- but to do so at the cost of himself seemed contradictory. If he was to lead he needed to take care of himself so he could take care of his people, always putting the people first then becomes detrimental.

Moderation was always key, at least to him, and that was the way he was going to choose to lead. Of course he would always think of the people, but he would think of himself too and then make a decision that benefited them both, sacrifice when he could, and be uncompromising when he could not. This was one of those times where, as much as he would like to walk away, he would not. “I highly doubt I will like any of my options, man, woman, or otherwise. I have no interest in being house omega and an unfortunate amount of countries still assume the omega’s place is anywhere but where I need to be. I am supposed to be a king, how could I possibly marry someone who would likely prevent that?” he asks. Senseless was what this was, but it was still a useful integration tool. Even if T’Challa thought they could do better.

“Marry someone who does not have their head in their ass,” Shuri says. She rolls their eyes, “what fool with that opinion would even show up here?” she asks and T’Challa raises an eyebrow, “fine, fair point. I am aware that we have useful resources but I _highly_ doubt they would make it far in this… marriage selection. Do you know the Americans have a show with a similar premise to this called The Bachelor? It is strangely addictive.”

“I am never speaking to you again if you find that junk entertaining,” he says.

“As if you do not like bad television, I know you have a secret fondness for British soap operas. You went to school there for a year and come back with a bunch of awful shows in tow, so no judging me for my bad taste.” He would object but she was right, he did have a secret fondness for all British television. That did not mean that he was going to accept Shuri’s bad television habits. They continue to argue about it back and forth before she gets bored and slinks off to go do whatever it was she did in her spare time.

*

Tony had zero interest in Wakanda, the prince, or anything else in relation to this whole marriage thing. But Obi had insisted, claiming it would be good for the company though Tony didn’t see how. Since he took over two years ago- when he was twenty one- the company has flourished in ways no one could have predicted. He is a genius, after all, so obviously he would have done fine but people were particularly surprised with his success because his entry into position as CEO involved him shutting down the weapons sector of the company. Everyone said he was a fool for it but he saw what those weapons did and he had no interest in carrying out the legacy of Howard Stark. Maybe before…

Now, though, he was stuck with Obi as a business partner and normally that wasn’t awful- except when it was. That was how he had, behind his back, been stuck into some bizarre competition for the attentions of the young omega Prince of Wakanda. It seemed a bit old fashioned to him but what the hell did he know about Wakanda? Because the answer was nothing he didn’t think he’d be a decent match for the prince but Obadiah had other ideas. And a sudden acceptance that Tony wasn’t straight. Pepper warned him against going but he figured he could knock himself out of the running quick and return to his lab and his company without Obi sitting around pestering him about things.

It wasn’t like he was a decent marriage candidate anyways, as a person or in the general context of what a high-powered politician would want or need. He knew that he was an ass, the he was selfish, and callus, none of those things made him the most likable of people let alone someone anyone would want to marry. So he’d go, disappoint Obadiah, and leave with his dignity and non-marriage status in tact. It would be like a small vacation, but without Obi breathing down his neck the whole time like he usually did.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Pepper asks, worried about him.

“Nope. But when am I ever sure of anything?” he asks with a grin. Pretty much his whole life has been him winging it and coming out more than on top, he had faith that would continue to work.

“Shutting down the weapons sector of the company,” Pepper says, “it’s the only thing I’ve ever seen you do because you were completely sure of it.” He stills for a moment, remembering coming back from Afghanistan traumatized but determined not to be his father. The trip was never meant to end badly- he and Howard were demoing the Jericho bomb and then… And then Howard was killed and Tony, he was lucky to escape for a solid five seconds before he was knocked out and captured. For three months he was kept in a cave with a broken leg making some sort of attempt to build a fucking bomb for _terrorists_ while Yinsen tried to fix him. Together they managed to fool the people holding them hostage long enough for Tony to escape- Yinsen not being so lucky- and he was back in America.

 _Don’t waste your life_. When Tony came back Yinsen’s words haunted him, they still did, but shutting weapons down was a good start in honoring that. “It was the right thing to do,” Tony says eventually, because it’s true, and a lot less horrifying than the whole tale.

“So it is, but you didn’t seem to care before,” Pepper reminds him gently. No, he hadn’t, because he was too caught up in trying to impress a man that was never going to be impressed with him and he was using blood money to do it. He shouldn’t have needed to experience what the people affected by his weapons to know they were wrong but that was how things went.

“Well, I care now. But back to the subject at hand- I might as well go and be my regular self, fail, and then Obi won’t be riding both of our asses about it. You know me, Pep, do you really think I’m marriage material?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Pepper smiles and shakes her head, “no, I don’t. But please don’t do something drastic while you’re there,” she says, “I’ve had enough heart attacks from your antics.”

He huffs out a laugh, “it’s me Pep, I’m sure at some point I’ll do _something_ to draw attention to myself.” When Rhodey had found him he asked how he had known and Rhodey had laughed and told him that some things just screamed Tony Stark and a giant explosion was one of those things.

*

Tony sticks to the back of the crowd, outright avoiding people in general let alone T’Challa. The point was to go unnoticed for as long as possible and then if he was lucky he’d get kicked out for being so boring. _That’d_ be a change of pace for him given his usual overexcitement. The crowd, he gathers, isn’t any more exciting than he is playing dull and he feels for T’Challa. He moves away from everyone else and ducks out a door onto a rather nice balcony, even by his own standards. From what he’s seen the whole country was nice, and very… _green_. He had no idea what he was supposed to expect but he didn’t figure he’d find a huge amount of trees for some reason. Or at least this area had a lot of trees, he had no clue what the rest of the country looked like.

He’s standing there for a few minutes before he hears a small meow to his left. He turns and finds a small white cat perched on a small ledge slowly inching towards him looking frightened. “How the hell did you even _get_ there?” he asks the animal, moving closer to the edge of the deck to help the cat. He doesn’t get an answer from the animal, obviously, and the little fur ball scoots away when he reaches out. “Damnit, if you don’t want to _die_ over there you best get your furry butt over _here_ ,” Tony tells it. Why he thought the cat would listen he had no idea, but the two small steps it takes backwards was irritating. “Oh come on, I’ve only got so much reach and you’ve only got so much ledge, make it easy for me,” he says, wiggling his fingers a bit. Mercifully the feline recognizes that it would benefit from the rescue and it starts crawling forward again. Tony manages to take hold of the cat and bring it back over the edge of the balcony, safe though probably a little traumatized.

“Thank you for rescuing my cat. I have no idea how Jujube even gets _up_ there but this is not the first time,” someone says from behind him. He just about drops the fluffy white cat- Jujube- but he manages to keep hold of the poor feline while he turns.

“Oh, uh, hi. Your cat might have a death wish,” he says, barely stopping himself from saying they had that in common. T’Challa didn’t need to know about his recklessness because it wasn’t relevant. Of _course_ he’d run into the prince while trying to avoid him. That was just his luck.

“She does, she likes high places and then suckers people into rescuing her from herself,” T’Challa says, grinning at the cat. Apparently Tony had _that_ in common too, except his ‘high’ places were more like terrible press coverage or being captured by terrorists. And to be fair he mostly saved himself from terrorists. Pepper had to save him from the press though.

“Well… at least she’s cute,” Tony says for lack of anything remotely more interesting.

T’Challa considers him for a moment, head titled to the side. “Why are you out here? If I did not know any better I would think you are avoiding me given that I am the main attraction,” he says, a slight resentment tingeing his tone. Ahh, so Wakanda _wasn’t_ so old-fashioned after all. Which begged the question of what all this even was then.

“To be honest I am. Again, in the interest of not wasting time of either of us, I have a bit of a bully for a business partner and it was easier to go along with his grand plans to make connections with Wakanda than to fight him on it. I’m not sure what he’s looking for though, the only thing I can think of is vibranium but that metal is too hard for most of my projects, and it isn’t very conductive. If he was looking for business ventures he should have chosen a prince with a bunch of gold. So basically I’m here until you kick me out, which can be now if you want, I won’t take it personally,” he jokes. Of course he wouldn’t, that was his whole plan.

T’Challa’s eyebrows shoot up, “well that is certainly interesting. Most people here have agendas, mostly political agendas, and to be fair so do I so I cannot really fault them for that. I did not expect to find someone without an ulterior motive, though.” He tilts his head again quizzically; examining Tony in what he thinks is a new way.

“I do have an agenda, it just doesn’t happen to include you,” Tony points out, “though I am interested in what you’re looking to achieve. This all seems a little… three hundred years ago by American standards.” Roughly, depending on what area you were from and sometimes race or culture. There were different courting conducts for most places and cultures to it sort of depended on where you were from and any cultural background you have. Hell, these days different subcultures had different rituals too- like the gay scene in San Francisco. There were a whole host of new rituals around same sex couples, combining cultures, and even accommodations for relationships with more than two people, though you’d have to find a tolerant community for that.

“This is three hundred years ago by Wakanda’s standards too, but this is an easy way to open the country up to the rest of the world and make easy ties politically and culturally. I certainly do not appreciate it, but I understand the importance of my father’s decision to integrate Wakanda back into world politics,” T’Challa tells him. He’s right, of course, but Tony still raises an eyebrow at that.

“True, though that doesn’t explain my presence. Pretty sure gay marriage would piss people off more than anything,” Tony points out, “and isn’t Wakanda doing fine? I’ve heard rumors of utopia.”

“Ha, utopia. Perhaps after the civil wars that ensued after we first closed off the country, and after we stopped relying on mining for our economy due to environmental damage. But we are sitting in a bubble- it would not do well for us to have an abundance of infighting so I suppose compared to some countries we might be utopian. And that is another problem- sitting in a bubble does not give you genetic variety, which is why there is an assumption that I will marry a woman despite the accommodation to my sexuality. That was more for my own comfort given that I am not at all comfortable with this whole… _thing_ ,” T’Challa says, waving a hand around. He wrinkles his nose in distaste too, obviously not pleased.

Tony laughs, “oh my god, did you just all but admit to me that you’re inbred? Because if you want people to leave quick, just tell everyone else that,” he says, snickering. Jujube does not appreciate his jostling her with his laughter so she starts squirming and he releases her onto the deck.

“I am not inbred, thank you, but if we continue the isolation we will be. We are not that large of a country and with no immigration or other methods of gathering new genetic material, well, I am certain you know basic science. And as much as I would like to sabotage my own marriage I will not because it is important. Though if you know anyone with a secret vendetta against omegas I would love to know. I hate cooking,” he says, shuddering in distaste.

“That’s gunna depend highly on specific geographical location, most countries are all over the place with the omega thing. God knows why, who cares? You smell pretty in heat, that’s about all that makes you special. No offense,” he throws in. It wasn’t like he was much more special, alphas were basically useless outside of chemically reacting to omegas the most, which did little more than help the reproduction of the species along a bit. Even then betas got busy too, humanity would be fine without anyone’s hormones making bizarre laws for omegas to follow because they smelled ok for a few days a month. Tony felt bad for anyone who had a menstrual cycle that coincided with their heat. That just seemed unpleasant.

“No offense taken,” T’Challa says, “at least I know there is at least one person here who does not have much of an interest in me. I never thought _that_ would be something I found appealing. And I _do_ know you have no interest, I am quite good at reading people so lying would not be wise.” His tone is just shy or sharp, but it’s final, Tony didn’t doubt that T’Challa really was good at reading people though Tony has never been a good liar where it counts. The only thing he was good at lying about was how much he slept, or more accurately didn’t sleep, the night before. After years of practice he finally managed to learn how to lie to Pepper so she wouldn’t worry about him so much. The bonus was that it worked on Rhodey too.

“Well, I guess that explains your honesty,” Tony says. For all T’Challa knew Tony could have been lying through his teeth to get to know him better, but he didn’t doubt that he was easy enough to read. It was something he knew because Obi tried to train him out of it for business purposes. Tony just learned to use it to his advantage instead because there was no way he’d break his habit of showing near all. “Ten bucks says you get a ridiculous amount of jewelry out of this,” Tony says, grinning.

“I already have, and if I receive some other tacky ring or necklace I might lose my mind,” T’Challa says, rolling his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the tone of this is weird and inconsistent it's because I have a cold. I did read the parts I wrote sick over again but like. Head cold. It makes things that are fuzzy clear and things that are clear fuzzy.
> 
> Warnings for death, sort of implications of torture, and I think that's it, if not let me know and I'll add it in!

T’Challa makes the mistake of looking up one Tony Stark after gathering his cat’s rescuer’s name. It takes him all of five minutes to hate the man, and another seven to wonder is the person he spoke to on his porch was even the same guy. The Tony he spoke to was confident, certainly, but somewhat reserved, disinterested in much than what T’Challa had been willing to offer at the time. The man from the press conferences, paparazzi, and other miscellaneous videos was… an absolute _ass_. He would not have been the kind of person T’Challa would have given the time of day to anyways, which made him wonder what changed.

That took him an embarrassingly long time to find, but he eventually learned of Tony’s father’s death by his own weapon, Tony’s capture, and his shutting down the weapons sector of his company immediately after coming home. He lost a lot of money and people were happy to remind him of it too, but his decision never faltered. The man from _those_ videos resembled the man T’Challa spoke to _far_ more closely than what he found to begin with. He skims through the information, absentmindedly petting Jujube as he gathers more on Tony, trying to figure out who he was dealing with.

“Of course the person that drew your attention most is a man. Dad should have predicted that,” Shuri says, not bothering to knock as she walks in. He resists throwing something at her to force her back out of his room, settling for glaring at her instead.

“He was interesting, that is hardly my fault,” he says, nose in the air. He did not need to explain himself to his sister.

“Russia seems interesting, I don’t even remember this one,” Shuri says, waving a hand at T’Challa’s computer screen. She would be the only one; everyone else in Tony’s home country seemed to have a hard time _forgetting_ who he was.

“If you find Russia interesting you marry her,” T’Challa mumbles, “and this is Tony Stark. I would have hated him two years ago but he seems alright now.” He hoped anyways, usually he was not wrong in his ability to read people but no one was perfect.

“Very mature, T’Challa,” Shuri says dryly, “so what made this one stand out?” she asks. Good question, one he keeps asking himself as his thoughts keep wandering back to the image of Tony leaning over the railing of that balcony wiggling his fingers at Jujube.

“I am not sure at the moment,” he admits, “but something is very… drawing about him. And Jujube likes him.” The cat disliked near everyone, including T’Challa some days, so her liking Tony was something of an anomaly.

“Of course your ignorant hairball likes him,” Shuri says, sneering at Jujube. The cat lifts her head and blinks a few times before realizing Shuri is looking at her, then she hisses in annoyance, swatting at the air between her body and Shuri’s. “Annoying animal,” Shuri mumbles, “so you find him drawing. Why? I don’t see anything particularly special about him,” she says. She tilts her head at the computer screen in question, frowning at what she found there.

“Then it is a good thing _you_ are not going to marry him then,” he points out, earning a raised eyebrow from his sibling. “What? It is a possibility, and I like him better than most of the rest.” Minus Russia, not that he was going to tell her that. He couldn’t remember the redhead’s name now but she had the quite confidence he was used to from the Dora Milaje. It had endeared her to him, and it did not hurt that she is attractive and clearly intelligent though she did not say much to him. That alone had been a blessing; she and Tony were the only ones who hadn’t introduced themselves using long monologs about who they were. At this point he did not care who they were, he had wanted a basic introduction, not an entire life’s story. The ‘getting to know you’ stage was supposed to come later.

Shuri sighs, “this is not going to go over well,” she warns.

“Then perhaps our father should have considered what would happen if he decided to marry his son off for political purposes,” he snaps. He takes a breath to calm himself but he is still unhappy with the situation. He loved his father of course, he’s a good man and a great king, but this was not what T’Challa had in mind when he learned of his father’s plan to integrate them into the world.

*

Wakanda had some weird looking fish but they were at least pretty, even if Tony has never seen a fish that particular shade of blue before. The rest of the house was crawling with a bunch of alphas trying to one up each other for the affections of a person who wasn’t even _present_ so Tony had gone out side. He never had liked this part of being an alpha, battling it out for omega’s affections and he rarely indulged. If someone wanted to pay attention to him they would, if not then he wasn’t about to make a strenuous effort for attention. Too be fair he rarely had to fight for attention, he happened to be the naturally interesting type.

So, despite his disliking chasing after omega’s affections, he was often portrayed as the ultimate alpha because they all seemed to toss themselves at his feet. He hadn’t ever been truly comfortable with that- it was too close to his father’s own reputation for comfort- but it was a space he knew how to operate well in so he never said anything. Then Afghanistan happened and Howard was dead, he was held captive, and when he got back he knew what he had to do.

Everyone called him crazy or laughed at him, claiming he had no clue what he was doing and they weren’t completely wrong. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he did know that ending weapons sales was the right thing to do. He’d never forget that loud blast, all the scrambling and then… then he noticed the bomb and so had Howard, at the same time. Tony knew he had a few seconds at best to act so he had gotten up to try and save his father as Howard had gotten up to try and run. The bomb went off, blasting Howard in the chest and the bulletproof vest hadn’t been enough to save him. Yinsen had tried when those terrorists found them, but there was only so much he could do with the heart of a man with a life-long drinking problem who also happened to be older.

Howard died, and Tony was then _persuaded_ into building those terrorists a bomb. He did the best he could to thwart their plans but he was in a fucking cave with no way out except the one he had been building. He had to cooperate as much as possible so that he could get out, get Yinsen out. Then Yinsen died and he managed to escape and Rhodey found him, nearly dead and severely dehydrated but alive. When he got home he had been determined to start fresh no matter how hard Obi tried to keep that from happening. In the last two years he hemorrhaged a huge amount of funds and he gained even more back since starting up his bid for clean energy. People hadn’t believed in his plan, but they were idiots with no imagination or business sense. Tony is a genius, and he intended to use that genius for something other than killing people for profit. What was the point of his brain if he didn’t use it to help?

“You look like you’re concentrating awfully hard on those fish,” someone says, a slight Russian accent tingeing their voice. Tony looks up and finds that stunning redhead he had seen here last night looking down at him with a slight tilt to her lips.

“Nah. The fish are boring, it’s everything else I’m thinking about,” he says.

“Think you have a chance?” she asks, carefully sitting down beside him.

“Hell no. God knows he’d deserve better even if I did. Though I am curious about you- everyone else here is some kind of politician or whatever, but I don’t recognize your face,” he says.

The redhead raises an eyebrow, “well I certainly recognize you. Natasha Romanov,” she says, extending a slim hand that looked delicate but hid a surprising amount of strength.

“Romanov? As in… Russian royalty?” he asks, frowning. He thought the Romanovs died out some time ago but apparently not.

He gets a bigger smile, “there are a few of us lingering. We just don’t advertise ourselves loudly- people tend to want us dead,” she says.

“No shit,” Tony mumbles, “so, you think you have a chance?” he asks because he had nothing better to ask.

“If I play my cards right. Why bother showing up if you have no interest though?” she asks, head tilted to the side. Scoping out the competition, really.

“Pushy business partner. But I guess we’ll see how this all goes,” Tony says. There wasn’t much else they could do really, other than wait for T’Challa to approve or disapprove.

*

In the week following the arrival of _far_ too many alphas T’Challa manages to comfortably rid himself of almost half of them. Most were either ignorant, not his type in a number of other ways, annoying, or politically terrible for Wakanda. His father was at least pleased that he had considered Wakanda’s politics in his decision making process. He wanted to point out that he would _obviously_ consider Wakanda’s politics given that this whole thing was designed to benefit the country. He wasn’t entirely sure where he fit into the equation- other than being the pawn that was being used to push his country forward. It was an instrumental role in his country’s future, but his personhood was sort of lost in the mix.

He understood why his father had gone this route and he did not resent him for it, but he did wish that they had talked about this more before he was thrown in the middle of a situation he had no idea how to handle. A king, his father would argue, would have to make tough decisions. T’Challa agreed though he wouldn’t have thought those decisions would have anything to do with his love life of all things. Worse than that, he was stuck making quick judgments that may not be rational, or he was stuck making snap judgments based on gifts he received. Too be fair most of what he had received were not gifts that were specific to him.

Most of the things he had gotten were generic and easy- things people would assume someone would want, not things he had any actual interest in. Jewelry was a popular gift much to his annoyance. He had zero interest in jewels or gold and he has told more than one person that those things were meaningless in Wakandan culture- so his continuing to receive those things was irksome. And it proved that those particular people had no listening skills, or at least they had little interest in listening to him. Those were obviously not traits that he desired in a marriage or a political partnership.

Given Tony’s somewhat ambiguous presence here he had not expected a gift, so when he receives one he’s surprised. “Jujubes?” he asks, head tilted at the package of candy in his hand before he starts laughing, “this is fantastic. Though I am curious as to how you managed this,” he says. Getting foreign food into the country would have been a hassle on its own let alone getting permission to hand it to T’Challa directly. That must have taken time, effort. It made T’Challa curious as to what kinds of efforts Tony would go through if he truly believed in his cause when he was willing to deal with what T’Challa knew would be a world of pain for a practical joke.

Tony grins, “I have my ways,” he says. Ways T’Challa was going to find out about because this would not have been an easy task. Not everyone agreed with the King’s plan to open them up to the rest of the world, certainly not all of the Dora Milaje, so how Tony managed to get foreign food _directly_ to him was a mystery. And, of course, it was the only gift to date that showed any thought to T’Challa himself minus a small cat figurine he got from one Natasha Romanov.

“ _Candy_?” someone else- T’Challa was not sure where they were from- says in a snarky tone. “Really?”

“Have you not met his cat?” Tony asks casually, earning a stumped look from the other alpha, “oh. Well then you wouldn’t get it,” he says, waving a hand around flippantly. The jealousy was immediate though Tony paid no attention to that. Instead he refocused his attention on T’Challa, “since I assumed you like jujubes I figured I’d get you some. Pretty sure they don’t have those here.”

“We do not,” T’Challa confirms, “and I do like them. I went to Oxford for my Masters degree and discovered them there.” He was rather sad to leave them behind but he figured his lovely cat was a reasonable compromise, even if Shuri thought he was a fool for naming his cat after a candy that he is fond of.

“Oh, I have a friend that went to Oxford. Well, a few technically but counting the people I actually like that’d be one,” Tony says, waving a hand around.

“Are you willing to give a name?” he asks, curious if he knew Tony’s friend. Probably not realistically but some people stood out enough to notice- like Tony himself. He was strangely… bright, attractive in a way that was not just related to his looks. T’Challa wanted to know more about him, learn more about what made him so drawing.

“Charles Xavier?” Tony says, eyebrow raised.

“The one who used that weird pickup line about mutations?” he asks, frowning. He was one of those bright people too, but he always rubbed T’Challa the wrong way- like younger Tony had before he seemed to have mellowed out some.

Tony laughs, “that’s the guy. He stopped with the bad pickup lines, though.”

“Well that is a relief, they were nearly as bad as yours when you were younger,” he says. Curiously Tony’s face closes off some, like T’Challa has said something wrong.

“I’ve learned better,” Tony says somewhat stiffly, offering an obviously fake smile.

T’Challa’s eyebrows draw together at the almost chilly reception but he chooses to ignore it. “So my research tells me. Most of your life is documented online and I must admit your ability to turn your company around after such a high stock drop is… well I would have assumed it was impossible. You are clearly competent in achieving what you set out to do,” he says. Unlike many of the other alphas here, actually. Many of them had high ambitions but not many have achieved their goals. Tony, however, managed to be part of a successful company from a young age and then he reinvented the company from nearly the ground up pretty much overnight and made profits even after considering everything he lost initially. And he was now running one of the most successful companies in the world.

That was not something to overlook lightly, and neither was his effort to buy something for _T’Challa_ instead of whatever they assumed he would want. Thus far he was the only one who actually listened to T’Challa when he said he was not fond of the jewelry he received. And the gift was not something that would have been easy to get into the country let alone managing to gain enough trust to hand it to T’Challa personally.

Tony, thankfully, seems to thaw some with T’Challa’s explanation. “I’ve never been very easy to take down once I had my mind made up,” Tony says with an almost shy smile, “it’s a good and bad quality.”

“It seems to work for you either way,” T’Challa points out. As much as he wished politics is not as clean and easy as he would like- Tony clearly had a kind of intelligence he could use for his own ends.

“Whether it works for the people most affected by my actions should be the concern,” Tony says. T’Challa recognizes the look on his face, the one he had at the press conference where he announced the end of weapons sales.

“I agree, but not many do.” The benefit of the many was the typical argument, but T’Challa found that more often than not the many was synonymous with the powerful. Idealistically he would like what was best for everyone, but realistically he would only be able to do his best with what he had.

“Not many who disagree are the people who are concerned with the consequences of the powerful. I know I wasn’t until I lived out what happened with my weapons. I shouldn’t have needed that to know what I was doing was wrong, but here we are. I learned my lesson and now I try to do right by people as best I can.” T’Challa smiles at Tony’s words, nodding because his views meshed nicely with T’Challa’s own views.

*

Shuri gives him a look, “you cannot like that one,” she says.

“He is the only one who has even paid attention to what I like, and he is successful, and cute,” he adds. “That last one is frivolous but the first two are useful so I feel entitled to look.”

“Stark looks vaguely like a bird and business is not politics,” Shuri points out.

“Business is involved with politics- his expertise is relevant. And he likes science, I like science, no one else here knows anything about engineering and that makes me sad.” He cannot possibly give up his science, he loved engineering and that was his only solace from the boring life of politics he was now doomed to.

“No one cares about your sadness, we all care about Wakanda so do not choose the bird-looking man because he likes science. That is a terrible method of choosing a partner,” she says.

“As opposed to what, Shuri? Ensuring a lifetime of unhappiness for myself? Because that will certainly not benefit Wakanda if I grow to resent the country because I was forced into a marriage I wanted nothing to do with,” he says, “I will choose who I see is the most fit. Besides, that Russian redhead is pleasant enough and she gave me a cat figurine.”

“Then marry the redhead,” Shuri says.

“A political affiliation with Russia though? I am not certain that is a wise move politically.” Shuri gives him a look but he has thought about this extensively. He knew very well that he was to choose wisely so he could benefit Wakanda- even if he was to sacrifice his own wants and needs in the process. It was not something he particularly wanted to do but he knew that this was a necessary move politically for his country. Sacrifice was always necessary for the King- and he would make this one no matter how much he did not want to.

“Do not choose with your heart, T’Challa. This is not a time to be selfish,” Shuri warns. T’Challa knew that, but there has never been a time in his life when he was allowed selfishness. He understood why, but he liked to think he should get one thing to himself and he assumed it would have been his marriage partner should he have chosen to get married. Now he did not have that either and it left him somewhat lost.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony liked the redhead because she was sassy and apparently able to beat people three times her size up. “I hope he has fun explaining to T’Challa _why_ he has a black eye,” Tony says, grinning at Natasha.

She smiles too, “that is going to be amusing. That’s what he gets for assuming that I lied about my fighting skills- god knows why I would even do that,” she says, rolling her eyes. Tony had no clue why she’d lie about that either, especially considering she made an offhand comment about military training- it wasn’t like she was bragging about it. After Tony watched her take a guy out for attempting to throw a punch at her in some absurd test of her skills he thought she had plenty of reason to brag, though. She took a guy out with her _thighs_. He wanted one.

“No clue, but people like to underestimate my skills too,” he says. His time as a party boy and his bad habit of screwing up very publically meant people didn’t often believe he had the skills he said he did, or they underestimated just how dangerous his intellect could be. That was how the Ten Rings screwed up and they ended up getting crushed for it. After three months sitting around with a bunch of guys who A, thought he was going to die, and B, didn’t think Tony knew how to speak their language he got some amazing intel for Rhodey. Plus he sent in a bunch of relief teams and medical aid to deal with the fallout of his own ignorance- it was only fair that he paid to clean up his own mess.

Natasha gives him a look and snorts, “oh I’m sure people underestimate you all the time,” she says sarcastically.

“Not because of my gender, if that’s what you’re getting at. But I’m young, and I have a reputation that isn’t exactly false. People don’t think I’m capable of the things I say I am,” he says.

“Are you?” Natasha asks, head tilted to the side.

“Of course I am. I have to listen to people spout off about how they’re so smart, and how they’re such experts when they know nothing about the subjects they’re talking about. I can’t stand people like that. If I say I know about a subject and that I can do something, I can. I don’t like claiming that I’m an expert in things unless I actually am.” Didn’t stop him from doing it anyways every once and awhile, like with his previous business in weapons. But he was now more aware that sometimes people might have a point- so he was working on critically examining criticisms to see if they held up to the reality of a situation. If they didn’t then he’d tear the person’s argument apart freely. But if they did then he thought more about their stance on the subject and researched it to further make up his mind on how said subject worked.

Natasha examines him for a long moment. “Well this is certainly a game changer. You’re well known for your arrogance but if you’ve actually _done_ the things you’ve claimed…” she trails off and Tony gets it.

“Trust me, no one has access to my weapons designs. They can’t find any of the things I made when I was under the delusion that I was being useful to the planet,” he says with confidence. Not that Obi hasn’t tried a few times unsuccessfully.

“Why not just destroy the designs? You’ve bragged about some pretty terrifying things,” she points out.

“Yeah, if we can casually ignore how much of an ass I was two years ago that’d be lovely. And I don’t want to destroy the designs on the off chance someone makes something similar. It’ll be easier for whoever is investigating to know how some of the stuff I made works so they can work on prevention. Everyone makes things differently, but getting the gist of how it works is always useful.” He thought of destroying his designs, Natasha had a point, but he left them around in case there was ever a need for knowing how the kinds of things that should only exist in nightmares work. Thank _god_ those terrorists didn’t know what he could really do with that brain of his.

“Do you really think people could replicate you’re uh… darker work?” she asks.

“The last time I assumed I was the only one who could do something some rando with a vendetta against my father popped up and claimed I stole his work because his daddy was pissed off mine stole his work. I didn’t, by the way, steal the guy’s work I mean. I made my mini reactor in a cave with a bunch of scraps, he had a lab. Point is, I’ve had people prove me wrong quite a bit lately and I’m not taking the chance that I’m the only one who thought up some pretty terrifying weapons,” he says. He didn’t like when other people replicated his work- Vankov shouldn’t have been able to make that reactor- but he did. Tony couldn’t just ignore that sometimes he wasn’t actually the only smart person in the room because he didn’t like it. The last two years have been a ride but he at least learned something from it, a lot of things actually.

“Ivan Vankov? I heard about that. Didn’t he end up dropping his case because your designs were different?” she asks.

He snorts, “yeah, he dragged me through the mud for a year all because he found a different way to do what I did.” He had located the problem with Tony’s original design first too- impressive in Tony’s opinion, at least if his design didn’t have the same issue. He figured it out first because his cores burned out faster than Tony’s. His knowledge of Tony’s poison core was a lot less impressive then, but he had eventually found a new compound that worked nicely and didn’t destroy whatever it was trying to power. As usual his discoveries were all over science journals and the news while people tried to recreate his results. He hopped he won a Nobel Prize for the new element just so he could brag to Richards about being ahead in what Pepper labeled their petty pissing contest. He didn’t think he was being petty and he was winning more Nobel Prizes if his damn life depended on it.

Natasha nods at his words. “Why couldn’t I have competition that didn’t sound so good on paper?” she mumbles.

“Depends on what you’re reading. Besides, you just took a dude out with your _thighs_ \- that was probably the most badass thing I’ve ever seen. I mean one time I made a whole new element out of thin air, but murder thighs are still pretty cool.” He grins at her and earns an eye roll in response, but she laughs so clearly he was right.

*

T’Challa knows that his father means well with his questions and concerns but it annoys him. “You know very well how I am. I am annoyed and tired and tempted to marry a tree because at least it would not have an opportunity to irritate me,” he says bluntly. The tree would not vie for his attention, would not try to impress him with their country’s politics, and attempt to explain why _they_ were the best option, or anything else because trees do not speak. He could live happily ever after alone in the forest with Jujube.

His father walks over and lays a hand on his shoulder, “T’Challa, I am not trying to force you into anything. I gave you choice for a reason,” he says softly, gently.

He shakes his head and stands, breaking contact with his father as he does. “No you did not. You cannot give a man a choice between fifty different prisons and claim that is a choice. It does not matter which option I chose I am stuck in a marriage built on politics, contracts, and agendas. Marriages are supposed to be a place of love, support, and joy, not political power plays.” It was one thing, _one_ thing, that he had to himself that was near free of the politics that plagued the rest of his life and now he did not even have that. Of course there would have been political implications no matter whom he chose to marry, but this was far more… _involved_ than he had wanted.

“This does not need to be an either or situation, T’Challa. You can find love in the same place you find politics. It worked out for your mother and I,” he says quietly, looking away briefly. He did not talk about her much, not after she was murdered.

“Did it really? She was killed for to achieve political ends. Political agendas have no place in a marriage,” he says firmly.

“I do not need a reminder of how your mother died, T’Challa,” his father snaps before taking a deep breath to calm himself. “I know you are under the impression that marriage is apolitical but it is not- history will tell you that marriage has always been deeply entrenched in politics. This is the best way to tie Wakanda into the rest of the world. From there we can work on further integration,” he says.

T’Challa shakes his head, “you used to tell me that as King I would have to make difficult decisions and yet you freely admit that marrying me off to someone for political purposes is the easy option. What am I supposed to take from that? Besides, when I am to take over as King I am supposed to be the embodiment of Wakanda, I am to be the heart of the country and if I am all but forced into a marriage that I never wanted or supported what does that tell the country? What does that tell our omega population?” he asks.

The last question was an impulsive addition but they both knew it was relevant to the situation even if his father would never admit it. He did not like the idea that his father would assume him any lesser than and alpha or a beta but there was a reason Shuri was not in his position. His father would claim age, of course, she was far too young to be married but one could make an argument that twenty-one was not old enough either. They have waited nearly two hundred years for this; they could wait four more for Shuri to be his age. Theoretically the results would be similar enough to be effective.

“Do not pretend like your being an omega has anything to do with this, your sister is too young and you are the one to take the throne. It was the most logical choice and I have done my best to make sure that you are comfortable in this situation,” he says. T’Challa can tell that he is growing irritated but only due to years of practice at reading his father’s body language. To someone who was not aware of the small tells he looked perfectly calm, which was the way he intended it to be.

“I absolutely will act like my being an omega is important in this situation. You claim it is not because you do not share the history I am now participating in where omegas were used as marriage tools for political ends. You get the luxury of thinking my status does not matter. You know full well that marriage would bring a foreigner far closer to Wakanda’s resources than anyone in this country would be comfortable with. Waiting a few years and using Shuri for your political ends would have given us political ties without the potential of allowing another country access to our political system and resources. That would have made more sense and it would have eased the worries of our citizens but instead you chose me. It is no accident that I am the omega- you are playing into the assumptions that omegas are more desirable than betas and we both know it. Do not give me a lesson in marriage being political and then claim my omega status is not- it is insulting.”

He was not pleased with the way his father, Shuri, and even the other alphas here were all dancing around the subject. It was no accident that a bunch of alphas were sent too given that omegas and alphas were assumed to be a better match chemically. According to research that was only partially true but he found people rarely listened to science if it disrupted their ignorant biases. Regardless, his status as an omega was a key part in this mess and he was not fond the kind of message that sent to the omega population of his country. For the first time in nearly five hundred years they were about to get an omega King only to have him married off to some alpha for shallow politics.

For a long few beats the air is silent before his father finally sighs, “I do not know why we are having this argument when we both know that no matter how much you disagree with me you will follow through with this. I appreciate that kind of trust,” he says earnestly.

“Good. Because if this goes wrong I am not certain that trust will remain.” That earns him a flinch but the statement is true, if blunt.

*

T’Challa lays on the ground with Jujube because the cat is the only one who did not care about what was going on in this damn house. All Jujube cared about was her food and whether or not she was going to get pet more than normal. Too be fair she was at least a little unimpressed that he forgot to feed her until after he was done his bathroom routine in the morning, but she seems to have forgiven him now.

“Aren’t you worried about bugs down there? I have seen some freaky looking spiders,” a familiar voice says. T’Challa looks over to find Tony leaning against a tree smiling, but keeping his distance. He would be the only one who knew how to give him some breathing room- even Natasha was a bit pushy in that category and she was the only option he did not completely hat at this point. Her little cat figurines were cute.

“You only find the spiders noteworthy because you have never seen them before. The spiders are normal to me,” he says. He was not the first one to mention them either, which made T’Challa wonder what kind of bugs these people were used to. Some of the people who mentioned spiders should have been more worried about the terrifying snakes in their home countries.

“I don’t give a shit what anyone says, three inch long blue spiders are not normal. They are not right. I mean no spider is but still, especially not the blue ones,” Tony says, shuddering.

“Spiders are very important, leave them alone. They cannot help that they have too many legs and eyes, they are doing good things.” Shuri hated them but T’Challa thought they were sort of cute in an odd way.

“I know that they’re important but they can be important the hell away from me. Seriously, _three inch long blue spider_. I have a friend back home who would have straight up left the country and he’s seen some shit, trust me,” Tony says, waving a hand around.

“Well, he is friends with you. Nothing is ever a dull moment with you- even dinner is amusing because you make faces every time someone says something you disagree with,” he says. It was both amusing and useful to him. So far he has learned that he and Tony agree on quite a few things, though they disagreed on a few legal matters that were likely irrelevant to a relationship. He also learned that Tony did not like pineapple, a man named Justin Hammer, geese, or goldfish. T’Challa understood the dislike for geese- he was not fond of birds as a whole- but the dislike for goldfish baffled him.

Tony grins, “glad I can be of service to you. I’ve always been a bit, uh, _vocal_ about how I feel about things though, so if you want an answer I’m not about to pussyfoot around it. It’s a waste of time,” he says.

“I agree. If only everyone _else_ agreed with that. So- how do you feel about the ocean?” he asks.

The question obviously throws Tony for a loop but he answers, “it’s okay I guess. Salt water makes my hair soft and I tan well thanks to being Italian but other than that I don’t really think about it much.”

T’Challa hums and looks back up to the sky, “I think that the things in the ocean are equal parts terrifying and ugly and I would prefer they stay there. I will take my changes with the blue spiders- Jujube can eat those but a giant squid is not something she can win a fight with.” The cat lifts her head at the sound of her name and makes an irritated noise when she discovers that she was not needed. She picks herself up and trots off to go sleep elsewhere as punishment.

Tony throws his head back and laughs, “well I guess I know the spiders aren’t deadly if the cat eats them. I might have to get me one because I am _not_ killing those things myself. And agreed on the ugly ocean things- have you seen blobfish? Those things are hideous.”

“Have you seen anglerfish? They are like Pac Man but with much more teeth and terror,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Tony laughs at this too and the environment feels less thick and forced despite T’Challa’s high stress level. It was pleasant, at least, even if he knew that all of his responsibilities were waiting at home.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony sits surrounded by books in the library. Why he hadn’t thought of this sooner he had no idea but the information he was gathering was astounding. He had noticed one of the Dora Milaje sneak in after him some time ago- probably because they weren’t big on trusting foreigners in Wakanda- but he didn’t mind much. Being watched as he read wasn’t much of a problem for him; it wasn’t like they were going to find anything interesting.

Science and technology was what Tony was most interested in, but he had plenty of general cultural questions and that usually required dipping into some history. He hadn’t much expected to be reading about religion but a lot of the local culture revolved around cats and Bast the panther god so he figured it was relevant information. He hasn’t heard T’Challa mention anything about religious rituals but the books didn’t say much either. Tony figured it was one of those things Wakandans didn’t write down on the off chance a foreigner got ahold of the information. It was something he noticed a lot of, gaps in the history, almost like someone purposefully removed pieces of history in all sorts of areas. Why someone would do that Tony had no idea, aside from not wanting someone on the outside to get that information. But what were the chances? So far his reading suggested Wakanda was pretty brutal when defending itself.

“Tony?” someone asks and he jumps, having found himself lost in questions about Wakanda’s green spaces. “How long have you been in here?” T’Challa asks, looking down at Tony from across the table he was sitting at. Shit, he hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke and Tony looked up.

“I don’t know, a few hours, maybe?” he says, frowning.

“Eight and a half hours,” someone else sys from behind him. Tony jumps again, looking behind him to find some other Dora Milaje behind him, and not the one who initially followed him in.

“You have spent nearly nine hours in here?” T’Challa asks, sounding shocked.

“Enough to notice that there are clear gaps in the library though that could be due to his strong ability to do research,” the Dora Milaje says.

“I just wanted to know about science here, honestly. No need to look so surprised, it isn’t like I get an opportunity to see how an isolated country’s scientific development occurred without the interruption of the outside world and globalization every day.” It was all fascinating information too- Wakanda’s scientific method was quite different than America’s.

“If you wanted to know about scientific progress why is there a book on Bast in your pile?” T’Challa asks, frowning.

“Because technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I had to know what was going on historically and that involves a bit of cultural understanding, which seems to be pretty tied to religion here, so I had to read about Bast to understand what the hell was going on. There’s no sense in only gathering knowledge in one area when all the other stuff going on around it influences what’s happening technologically. Like the atom bomb- you can’t understand _why_ it came into existence without understanding what was going on in World War Two, and you need to know about the background battles to know why the Japanese were targeted with the weapon later. If you don’t do that you just have the knowledge of this horrible invention that spontaneously popped up for what seems like no reason. Technology and science has a history, you have to know about it to properly understand it,” he says. _Obviously_. Or maybe not so obviously given the look on T’Challa’s face.

“This one is not horrible,” the Dora Milaje says to T’Challa before walking off, presumably to go hide in the shadows again.

“That is incredibly intelligent,” T’Challa says. Tony isn’t sure if he should be offended that T’Challa looked so surprised or not.

“Well yeah, I’m a genius,” he says. People seemed to forget that often and he had no idea why- it wasn’t as if he lacked the proof of his intelligence.

T’Challa sits down across from him, carefully moving some books around so he can still see Tony. “From my understanding of America you do not study knowledge this way. You study things separately, as if they do not intersect, so the fact that you have decided that this is the way you understand technology is surprising to me. Unless I have misunderstood how Americans gather knowledge academically?” he says, voice rising at the end slightly to make it more of a question than a statement.

“You haven’t. I just find it useful to know why things started developing the way they did, I find it gives me a better understanding of technological development. I mean when I make tech now it’s because of the cultural circumstances I’m in. Why would I have focused on clean energy if global warming wasn’t a concern? Why would I have focused on weapons before that if my country wasn’t involved in war? When I invent now I consider how it is culturally useful, so why wouldn’t I do that with the past?” It was a logical way to process information, at least in his opinion. Obi had some things to say about the way he did research, as did his father, but neither one of them had a counter argument to his pointing out that they didn’t just invent things, they invented things specifically to sell in today’s cultural market. Clearly, to him, this indicated that he was correct and they were idiots.

“And what did you learn about Wakanda?” T’Challa asks, sitting back in his seat a little.

Tony sits back in his seat and examines the books in front of him, trying to figure out how to organize the information. “Well, Wakanda used to have a pretty big mining industry, which ended when you noticed environmental change because the panthers started acting weird. Interestingly you guys jumped straight into figuring out alternative methods of extracting resources from the land without messing with the panther’s habitats. And clean energy became a thing too, once you all did more research into how your environment was reacting to your previous mining. And then there was a bunch of green space initiatives, but those seem to be more because someone thought they would look cool because you weren’t _that_ damaged by the mining so. The buildings do look cool, though,” Tony says.

The pictures showed some really cool gardens built _into_ the walls of buildings. He kind of wanted to steal an idea or two for SI because he had _ideas_ and he had walls that were doing nothing else. Might as well make them plant holders, though he’d have to make sure the walls could support the plants. It’d give the secretary on the bottom floor something more thrilling to look at.

“Is that everything?” T’Challa asks, lips quirking up a bit.

“What? No, the panther thing made no sense to me so I ended up reading a bunch of stuff on Bast, which was mostly useless. No offense- I don’t do the religion thing. Anyways, after that and reading on clean energy I ended up reading about your scientific method- way different than what I’m used to in America, so I tried to find out _why_ you tested things the way you do, which somehow led to me reading on politics? I don’t know, but I _did_ learn that despite technically having a monarchy Wakanda runs on a democracy- that’s useful. Oh, and you all have a thing for candied walnuts.” The walnut thing was pretty inexplicably but when he had read some stuff about pop culture candied walnuts were strangely popular.

“They taste good, leave us be,” T’Challa says. “You seemed to have learned a few things. Interestingly you’re the only one who has taken an interest in learning about Wakandan culture outside of what you are being exposed to.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up, “really? But you’ve got much interesting stuff to learn about. You have a lot of different environments here, more than I would have expected for a country so small. Please tell me the stuff I read about panthers just roaming around is fake though, I do _not_ want to run into any jungle cats.” The house cats, those were lovely even if Jujube hot herself stuck in ridiculous places. Jungle cats, though, were not on his list of things he was looking to deal with any time soon. Or ever, honestly.

“We generally let the panthers roam, yes. They do not tend to go near people anyways, and when they do they are generally friendly,” T’Challa says.

Tony’s eyes grow wide, “you do _what_? Jungle cats _eat_ people!” he says.

T’Challa shakes his head, “the panthers are disinterested in people. The only time they have made any attempt at attacking is when they were being forced out of their environment- which we brought on ourselves.”

“Yeah, uh huh, note to self I am never leaving this house _ever_.”

*

T’Challa shakes his head at Tony’s worry of being eaten by panthers. Foreigners, they did not understand. But he was impressed with Tony’s taking an interest in his culture when no one else has. He was starting to wonder if Tony was really disinterested in this marriage arrangement at all considering he was particularly good at attracting T’Challa’s attention. With a bit more prodding Tony provides a brief history of the country too, including several civil wars that were eventually resolved with the modern voting system. It would not do well to have the country fighting with itself so they learned other ways to resolve their issues.

Tony also seemed to have picked up on how the jail system worked after making the mistake of looking up how laws around foreigners worked. Not well for the foreigner was the answer, though Wakanda could not afford to have much of its population in jail at any one time so they learned new ways to deal with punishment and crime too. According to Tony their system worked similarly to the jail system in Scandinavian countries. T’Challa had no idea what was going on in Scandinavian countries to know if Wakanda’s jail system functioned anything like theirs. He also picked up on the history of the Dora Milaje when he had looked up the voting system and democracy.

Their original purpose had been something like what was happening now with T’Challa. Wakanda would take women from various areas of the country and the King would choose which best suited him- meaning none of the areas quarreled over which area had more political pull because they all had an equal chance of gaining that political power. Of course this did not work well for long- certain areas became more desirable than others and the purpose of the Dora Milaje shifted in purpose to be protectors of the King- balancing power out again. They were still taken from all over Wakanda and typically went through a lifetime of training to gain their positions. They were all volunteers, but the job was prestigious- there were a lot of volunteers. Tony had been surprised that they were all women, which T’Challa figured was fair given the strong history of sexism in his own country.

“They were women before, why not keep them women? They go through almost as much training as I do,” he says, not thinking his words through before they were out. He mentally curses himself in his native tongue.

“You go through training? For what?” Tony asks, head tilted to the side.

T’Challa sighs and sits back in his seat, “that, I am afraid, was information I was not supposed to give out. You have noticed the gaps in the library- they are no accident. There is a lot of information we do not want foreigners to have and that is a bit of information I was to keep to myself. What is left in this library is intended to help any of my supposed suitors to understand the culture here better without gathering information that is abundantly important.” They did not need to know about Black Panther and the rest of the traditions surrounding Bast and their cats. They just needed to know that Bast existed and that cats were important.

Tony frowns, “I think your prison and voting systems are both pretty important- why keep that here? Knowing how a political system works can give a person a lot of power- trust me, the government and I have tangled on more than one occasion and every time the government has been forced to crawl away with their tails between their legs. It’s kind of fun,” Tony says, grinning.

Yes, so T’Challa has read in his research. Tony was quite good at twisting things to go his way- something that would be incredibly useful in politics. He was also quite good at being an out and out ass like he had been when he came back from Afghanistan. The government was not fond of his breaking his weapons contract but Tony played the media and his own image well and they were forced to let Tony out of his contract while Tony literally blew Congress kisses. T’Challa wanted a man like _that_ by his side if for no other reason than his own inability to be so rude himself. He loathed diplomacy but it was necessary to keep things polite given that world politics gone wrong tended to end in wars. The rest of the world was not Wakanda- they did not have the same heavy communication and voting system that they did. Unfortunately.

“That is true- but you are not a citizen. You have no rights here so your knowledge is relatively useless. And the jail system is irrelevant to you too- foreigners are not treated with nearly as much dignity and respect as Wakandan citizens are. Something I disagree with personally- but the country is resistant to change in that area. It will take convincing to get the votes to change our laws in regards to foreigners.” It was unfortunate but true. T’Challa was hoping Wakanda’s exit into the rest of the world would make the country more comfortable with change but that would be slow moving.

“If your country is so resistant to foreigners what am I doing here? And the rest of the alphas?” Tony asks.

The question is more than fair. “You are here because my father briefly made use of a law that is rarely enacted that gives the King the power to override the legal system. The country never would have agreed to this arrangement and he knew it- but we need the rest of the world now as much as we might not want to admit it and so he gave the country no choice but to change.” Wakanda had kept quite about it for the most part but the citizens did not need to speak for him to know they did not approve. The tension was heavy in the air and his father must be feeling extreme pressure to do things right.

“So theoretically T’Chaka could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted? What was the point of making such a complex voting system if your King can override it at any moment? Seems pretty useless to me. But out of curiosity what do you think of your father’s decision to ignore the law and what the country would have wanted?” Tony asks. He leans forward some in interest, clearly invested in what T’Challa was going to way. It was not something he saw a lot of from the other alphas. They spent more time explaining why they were the best option, or their own cultural customs, or whatever else they deemed important. Things like politics, economy, and trade were popular discussion topics and it bored T’Challa half to death.

“He could, in theory, but it is not likely that Wakanda would stand for that. Should he abuse his power he would not be worthy of the- of his place as King,” he says, stumbling over his words slightly as he corrects the information he was giving Tony as it came out. Again- the knowledge of Black Panther and Wakandan traditions around their King was not knowledge Tony was to be privy to. “As for my opinion… that is complicated. I understand why my father chose this route- why Wakanda needs it. So objectively I agree. But morally I do not agree with ignoring the wishes of your entire country without giving them some time to absorb the idea and let them come to the same conclusions he has. We have time; he could have used it to bring the country up to speed without thrusting us all into situations we are not comfortable with.” The issue was complicated but T’Challa still felt that Wakanda would have eventually caught up with his father’s considerably liberal views of foreigners, the country just needed time. They should have been granted that.

Tony nods, “hmm. So you consider moral and objective knowledge different, then? I came across some of that in your science development but I’m not certain I understand it.”

“Yes- we have a few different forms of knowledge. In America, from what I understand, there is objective knowledge and junk knowledge. You are not fond of anything emotional or associated with the body. Personally I find that strange given that body knowledge and emotional knowledge are both very important but I am not from your culture. Of course I do not understand it. Mostly because moral reasoning is often used in law and policy in America- which conflicts with the prevailing notion that objectivity is key. In Wakanda we have three dominant sets of knowledge. Body knowledge, emotional knowledge, and what you would refer to as objective knowledge. We try to incorporate those three forms of knowledge into the way we study things- which is probably where you got confused.” It was difficult for him to follow research sometimes and he is used to the knowledge systems of his country, and he was quite educated.

“Right. You’re also right about America, though I’d argue that capitalism influences how we see things. People don’t like talking climate change because it costs more to be environmentally friendly, for example. But back to you. So to use the environmental stuff from your mining industry as an example, the objective knowledge there would be the actual science and fact of the changing environment. But the body knowledge, would that be like… the panthers?” he asks, frowning a little.

“Yes, the panthers could count. But there were certain areas of Wakanda that were more affected than others- meaning certain populations were more at risk of feeling the effects of the environment than others. They would have also counted in body knowledge,” he says. It had been difficult, according to his grandfather, to convince people that there was actually a problem with their environment- at least until the panthers began to act strange.

“Okay, that makes sense. And the emotional knowledge in that case, that would also be the panthers right? They started acting weird because their environments were being affected and people didn’t want to piss off your god, Bast? Am I getting that right?” Tony asks.

“Mostly. Emotional knowledge would have also been tied to the people in the more affected environments, they were not fond of their poisoned environments and it would have been morally cruel to let them suffer for so that everyone else could live if we could change that. It was a slow process but once the panthers got involved people were far faster.” Tony nods as he takes the information in, processing it for several moments before he speaks again.

“So… people cared more about the panthers than the people? Seems kind of shitty to me. People should have cared before the possibly wrath of a god came into play.”

“Bast is a rather peaceful god- do not confuse her with your Christianity. People were resistant until the panthers got involved not because they were suddenly afraid of wrath, but because people lie and panthers do not. It is easy to deny the lived reality of a person, but the panthers would not have started moving into human cities unless there was something wrong with the places they lived before. And Bast would not be fond of poisoning the panthers however peaceful she may be.” Not that she was used as a tool of fear like he seen in several other places. Historically that has been false, but no one had a clean history.

Tony smiles, “oh Christianity can be plenty peaceful too, it’s just that the loud ones get the most attention. So Bast, tell me more about her. I’ve gathered that she’s a panther- and a woman- that’s pretty odd considering what I’m used to. Women seem to have a lot of power here- historically too, or am I missing the women’s liberation movement in the library gaps?” Tony asks, drawing a laugh from T’Challa.

*

“America?” his father asks, frowning.

“They are a global superpower- they are not a bad choice,” T’Challa says. His father wrinkles his nose more.

“They are nosey- they like to stick themselves into situations they have no business being in,” he says.

T’Challa sighs, “I am one hundred percent certain that America is not alone in that. He read about our culture, and asked questions, including questions about omega history. I appreciate that.” No one else has asked- they’ve all been dancing around the elephant in the room while Tony just out and out asked. Not that T’Challa could give him much- omega history was scrubbed from the library for a reason. Neither his father nor the Dora Milaje had wanted anyone to know the history of omegas in an attempt to use that historical and current cultural knowledge to their advantage. But he still appreciates the efforts Tony put in.

“T’Challa, you cannot just think of your heart, you have to think with your head too,” his father tells him.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes just barely. “I know that. But like I said- America is a global superpower and Tony would know all the right people. And America _does_ make it their business to know what other people are doing- that can be useful. Besides, the next best option is Russia and I am not certain that sends the right political message to the rest of the world considering the political climate there at the moment,” he points out. America, while disliked by a lot of other countries, was still politically and economically powerful. In all honesty he did not know how he felt about Russia considering he was part of a population they were not fond of given his sexuality. He rather liked his rights as a person, and America at least had marriage equality.

His father looks pained, probably because he agreed with T’Challa but angering Russia seemed like a foolish idea. And Natasha was wonderful even if her country was… questionable politically, at least momentarily. She had a lovely sense of humor and was particularly fond of memes- which were a whole new concept to T’Challa. “What about the woman from Ethiopia, they are close geographically. And I like the one from Britain,” he says.

He wrinkles his nose, “I am not fond of the woman from Britain. Are all people from Europe that pale? Even Tony has some color to his skin, though apparently that is because he is Italian. So I suppose _some_ Europeans get some sun. And the woman from Ethiopia is alright, I suppose, but I am not marrying someone because their country is above mine. That is poor reasoning.” Egypt had a thriving economy, at least, so if he wanted political ties to remain in the continent the woman from Egypt was more interesting than the one from Ethiopia.

“Oh, the pale Europeans. The other night I thought I saw ghost but he turned out to be a small man Poland,” his father says, hand over his heart.

T’Challa considers this for a moment before bursting out laughing, “I am glad I am not the only one startled by pale skin in the night. I did not expect them to be so… bright,” he says. Which made sense considering he was not exactly used to seeing pale skin at night in a country of people who were not pale. There was the brief year of school he had done in Britain but even then the pale skin threw him. To be fair they seemed just as thrown by his darker skin depending on the location.

“Well, I suppose if you did marry Tony you would not have trouble locating him in the dark. That might be useful considering how impulsive he is. Do you have to like that one?” he asks, back to wrinkling his nose in disapproval.

“If you wanted to political ties to Ethiopia you should have waited to marry Shuri off, she would have married someone from Ethiopia.” She was not fond of the idea of foreigners, much like the rest of the country, if his father wanted ties close he should have gone with her.

His father sighs, “you always were a bit of a free spirit,” he says in a resigned tone. Good, because T’Challa was going to do what he wanted, seems how he was supposedly allowed to do that. Perhaps that will teach his father a lesson in trying to stick him into situations he expressly told him he was not comfortable with. And besides, there were worse choices than America as far as political ties went. There were certainly a significant amount of better options too, but he wanted to be married to someone he liked and actually _wanted_ to spend time with, not someone who was politically useful and that was it. If that turned into his primary motivation he would live a boring life and he had no interest in that. Like his father said- he has always been a bit of a free spirit and Tony understood that because he was a free spirit too, even if he was a bit uh, _freer_ than T’Challa himself.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord, sorry this took so long! I just got my final paper done for this semester today and sent off another grad school app so I have been a busy bee. But I'm free for the rest of the semester minus an exam! Yay! 
> 
> So naturally I finished this chapter :)

“What are the bugs like?” Rhodey asks him.

Tony wrinkles his nose, “horrible and wrong. They have _flying spiders_ , Rhodes. _Flying spiders_.” At least he was fairly certain that thing that came at him in the shower that morning was a flying spider. It was terrifying and there was screaming but he’d never admit to that. He had his dignity to preserve and he sure as hell wouldn’t manage if he was screaming about spiders in the shower.

“Wakanda needs to stay where it is forever,” Rhodey says, deadpan. Tony laughs because Rhodey’s dislike of bugs was well documented over the years. Tony, his army buddies, and Pepper all had a large amount of blackmail worthy pictures of Rhodey screaming as he ran from various bugs around the world. Back when they were in college Tony had had to be the one to grow up and get the spiders otherwise he and Rhodey were screaming and jumping around on whichever bed was furthest from the spider yelling at each other to get the thing. Usually the spiders ended up disappearing, which only served to freak them out more.

“Wakanda can do whatever so long as their flying spiders stay here. There’s these creepy blue ones too but Jujube seems to find them when I do and eats them, thank god.” The cat was a lifesaver when she wasn’t getting stuck in ridiculous places, like his suitcase. He had shut the thing not realizing the cat was in it until he spent nearly an hour trying to locate where the cat was meowing. She stayed out of the suitcases now, though, so there was that.

Rhodey frowns, “what the hell is a Jujube? Well, I mean a candy but your not talking about candy unless Wakanda has some horror movie level candy that eats spiders.”

“T’Challa’s cat. He’s fond of jujubes and named his cat after them,” Tony explains. Boy had it been a freaking _struggle_ to get a package of jujubes into the damn country let alone actually _giving_ them to T’Challa. As if Tony would poison him with candy of all things.

“Huh. So this uh, competition…” Rhodey says, making a face as he does so. It wasn’t hard to see why he was uncomfortable given his own omega status. When he first joined the military things had been rather difficult for him given that people weren’t fond of the idea of taking him seriously. Joke was on them, Rhodey was now in one of the highest positions he could get in the military and he was _damn_ good at his job.

“Rhodey, I’m not a creep, you know that,” he says and Rhodey wrinkles his nose more, “now that’s just offensive.”

“Look, I love you man, but you’re an ass. Don’t be an ass to T’Challa,” he says.

“I am not an ass! Okay, well I am an ass, but not about your ABO score. What the hell does that matter to me?” he asks. Scientifically, despite previous pseudoscience, being an omega did _not_ do much to brain function outside of heats- same with being a beta or an alpha. However if you _thought_ it would make a difference it would. Kind of like a placebo affect but for how you functioned and reacted to various tasks. Ergo, it didn’t matter and people who thought it did were not only scientifically wrong, they’re assholes too.

“Mmm, you aren’t an ass because about ABO scores because I trained you out of being an ass about it. And Pepper trained out of being a misogynistic dick, thank god. If you had have met my momma the fist week I knew you she would beat your ass and you would have deserved it too. Don’t look at me like that! Would you have even taken an interest in the science behind the supposed ‘omega brain’ thing if I hadn’t pointed out that it was bullshit? And I _know_ you wouldn’t have paid any attention to women’s rights. So don’t be an asshole because I know you can be,” he says.

Tony opens his mouth to say something, pauses, and realizes that Rhodey kind of had a point. Though to be fair they did meet when he was fifteen and Rhodey was twenty- obviously there were going to be maturity differences. “I am not currently an ass over ABO scores, and I’ll have you know that I’m rather well-liked,” he says, nose in he air.

Rhodey snorts, “oh yeah, being well-liked is totally a good thing. Have you even _thought_ about being married?” he asks. Tony’s eyes triple in size and Rhodey starts laughing, “oh my god. I can’t believe you’d go to what is essentially a competition to marry someone without actually considering the fact that you _might_ end up married. I love you, man.”

*

Tony has never really been much of a person for sleeping and a favorite past time of his is walking around at night. Unfortunately being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company didn’t exactly give him the time to do anything other than work. Also he liked his lab more than going on walks so most nights he ended up holed up wielding something or designing something else. In Wakanda, however, he had a _lot_ more free time and Obi insisted on him giving T’Challa his ‘full attention’- which was essentially code for Obi wanting Tony to do what Obi wanted him to. He did it with other work projects too, telling Tony to focus when all he cared about was the end result no matter how much Tony taxed himself to get there.

Needless to say relaxing was not something that came easily to Tony because he almost never had free time. He’s designed a few things of course, but he had no opportunity to build his designs and test them here. It wasn’t like Wakanda has labs open for him to use and he sure as hell wasn’t stupid enough to try. So walking around at night it was- there were less bugs at night though he had learned the hard way that Wakanda had some terrifying night bugs. Rhodey would hate it here, but everyone else would get a kick out of watching him run screaming from the giant night spider that lived in the creepy looking trees. Pepper would like the scenery though she’d probably prefer it in the daytime. She wasn’t much of a night person but that was partially because she also happened to be a morning person and a freak of nature.

Tony makes something of an effort to explore a little at least- which was how he found the creepy night spiders and how he learned not to mess with the flora in Wakanda. Surprise spiders were only worth it when Rhodey was around to scream and Pepper was around to kill them. Instead of poking at trees and flowers he took to trying to find paths he could walk on without dying because he was fairly certain the Dora Milaje that were undoubtedly following him around wouldn’t save his ass. This time he managed to find a rock that overlooked a neat looking waterfall, not that he was looking at it much. He had some designs to figure out so he was attempting to do math, but the noise was calming. He doesn’t even notice the crunching until he hears a soft curse from a familiar voice. T’Challa has his hand pressed to his heart and he looks frazzled. “Did I scare you? because I feel like the light should be obvious,” Tony says, gesturing to the soft light that was currently lighting his notebook pages.

“You know that light will attract the panthers, right?” T’Challa asks. Tony immediately turns out the light because no he did not know that. T’Challa laughs, “had you been noisy they probably would have avoided you but you are rather quiet. Which was why you startled me. And your skin- it is so pale, I am not used to it,” he says somewhat sheepishly.

“What? What’s up with my skin?” he asks, looking down at his hand. It looked normal to him; it wasn’t any more pale than normal.

“Tony, I have grown up in a country of people that are various shades of brown. White skin is not something I saw a lot of until I went to Oxford and it was a shock. Almost as much of a shock was it was to learn they thought _my_ race was relevant. I had not put much thought into my skin tone until then,” T’Challa says.

Right, Wakanda did the isolation thing. Whiteness wasn’t something T’Challa would have had a ton of experience with. “So… seems how you probably have completely different standards of beauty am I even pretty to you? because I will have you know that I am very attractive in America,” he says, sitting up a little straighter.

“Did you just refer to yourself as pretty?” T’Challa asks.

“I can’t help being naturally more attractive than most people,” he says, “this is just how it was meant to be.” Call him arrogant, but he didn’t think there was anything wrong with thinking that you were attractive- also he knew he was attractive given the sheer number of people who threw themselves at him. Only half of them wanted his money- that was just a bonus for the other half.

T’Challa snorts, “well, I suppose I can appreciate your confidence. And yes, to answer your question you are rather attractive despite not really fitting Wakandan standards of beauty. You’re… exotic,” he says and Tony wrinkles his nose.

“Did you just call me _exotic_? I have to tell Rhodey about this- usually he’s the exotic one,” Tony says, shaking his head. Rhodey wasn’t going to believe this. When he finally did believe it he was definitely going to laugh his ass of though.

“Rhodey?” T’Challa asks, neatly sidestepping the exotic thing. Probably a politician tactic or something. Tony lets it go because he’s far more fond of needling American politicians.

“My best friend, we’ve known each other for eleven years. He was the one that found me actually, after Afghanistan. I was gone for three months and he didn’t give up on me. That’s friendship,” he says. Tony couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t have given up on Rhodey, mostly because he was a selfish ass.

“Sounds like he is more than a friend,” T’Challa says.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. He’s more like the brother I never had- or like my mom but a guy.” He loved his mom dearly but she had always been a little distant even before the car crash. Tony never would have guessed that Howard loved her but he was a fucking mess when she died. He started drinking more, inventing less, and going to work less. He signed the company over to Tony as soon as he hit twenty-one but by then Obi had been running things for some time with Tony doing the background inventing. Tony, idiot that he was, thought that maybe he could finally impress his father after falling short all those years by making the company something new. He completely overhauled everything and boy did it pay off, but Howard didn’t notice. He had only just started to take an interest again when they took that trip to Afghanistan and now… now he’s dead and Tony was finally doing what he felt was right, what felt good to him. It was sort of freeing.

“That is not what I meant and you know it,” T’Challa tells him, walking closer to the rock Tony was sitting on.

For a moment Tony doesn’t know how to take that and then he realizes what T’Challa was referring to and grins. “Are you _jealous_? You’re totally jealous. That’s so flattering,” he says, wriggling a little happily.

“I am not jealous. Jealousy is unbecoming of a prince,” T’Challa says, ducking his head a little.

“No need to tell anyone but me. I might be a gossip, but not about this sort of thing. And just so you know there isn’t anything romantic between Rhodey and I- never has been.” There was that one time in college a few years after they met that they sort of attempted a relationship but it went horribly because the chemistry just wasn’t there, at least not romantically. Honestly it was a horrible idea and they both decided to never speak of it again. They should have just left the good platonic chemistry alone instead of throwing romance at it. The good news was that Tony learned his lesson for when Pepper came along and they ended up with the same kind of relationship- one that worked well and did not need romance. Knowing to leave it alone was a good thing to have learned because he didn’t even know his own social security number and Pepper had all that junk knowledge.

“And you’re sure about that?” T’Challa asks, eyebrows lifting. The moonlight was surprisingly bright, bright enough that Tony almost hadn’t needed his light to see his notes and certainly bright enough to see T’Challa’s facial expressions. Actually the moonlight hitting his cheekbones was surprisingly pretty- he almost looked delicate if it weren’t for the clear dominance in his body language. Some people- read ignorant alphas- might have been put off by confidence like that in an omega but Tony preferred it.

Demure was not his thing and if he didn’t have someone around to constantly challenge him and question him he got bored quick- hence why he liked Pepper and Rhodey so much. And his brief, though fiery, relationship with that one reporter… Christine! Pepper would be proud he remembered her name given that it hadn’t lasted long. His relationship with her sort of blended in with his grieving process after Afghanistan. In hindsight that was a terrible time to start a relationship but he’s awesome at coming up with terrible ideas. Rhodey could attest to that given the sheer amount of times he’s had to cover Tony’s ass in the past.

“I’m pretty sure, yeah. I mean unless there’s something he isn’t telling me but we sort of got comfortable with each other forever ago- if he was harboring any sort of romantic feelings for me he’d just tell me.” His reaction would probably guarantee that Rhodey would stop having romantic feelings for him. He didn’t do the romance thing well, which made him wonder what the hell he was doing here anyways.

“Good, because I would be rather displeased with that,” T’Challa says, lips tipping up some.

*

Tony walks back into the mansion with a dazed smile on his face, not paying much attention to where he was going. “Smells like _someone_ is ahead in this race,” someone- that Polish guy Tony thinks, says. He doesn’t look impressed but Tony was fairly certain the guy was allergic to smiling or something.

“Guess so,” he says. He hadn’t expected it when T’Challa had leaned forward a little, sniffing him. Scenting someone was somewhat customary in America- it was a decent way to see if you were compatible with a person chemically at least. If that was normal in Wakanda Tony had no clue given that all things omega had been taken out of the library he snooped through, but he had been more than happy to sniff T’Challa back. Unsurprisingly they had been a match. Tony had been tempted to lean into T’Challa’s neck and sniff more but he restrained himself on Rhodey’s advice in regards to not being a dick. The look on Rhodey’s face when random alphas tried to sniff him down was both hilarious and kind of terrible considering people should know what _boundaries_ are. If the betas and other omegas knew how to keep their noses to themselves alphas shouldn’t have an issue.

“Hmm, shame,” is all the other guy says before he gives Tony a weird smile and walks off. Tony decides to ignore that because he had better things to focus on. Like T’Challa’s scent.

_Twelve Hours Later_

Natasha had no god damn clue what was happening- one second she was sleeping, then she was woken up by an explosion and within minutes she was on her ass in a jail cell and judging from the confused voices around her she wasn’t the only one. “Anyone happen to know what the hell is happening?” she asks to no one in particular.

“No clue,” someone else answers, “but Stark is so dead.” Natasha raises an eyebrow because that seemed off from her own observations of T’Challa’s interactions with the man. He was clearly favored and she could see why. He was genuinely funny and completely oblivious to the politics playing out around him- no, that wasn’t quite right- he knew what was going on, he just had no interest in the politics. It matched up with what the rest of her research told her about the man. He was impulsive, careless, and had a tendency to ignore the rules in favor of doing whatever the hell he wanted and he reaped some heavy rewards from it too. The man is a genius in several areas.

“And what makes you think that?” she asks, curious.

“Because we all got tossed in here and he got dragged off somewhere else,” the person says. Well, now that was just curious. What the hell was going on, why was T’Challa’s very clear top pick being dragged off, and what did that have to do with the explosion? She could hazard a guess given Stark’s past with explosions but… that didn’t seem right. The man was no longer interested in weapons and had no real reason for being here, unlike everyone else here herself included. Besides, linking Stark to an explosion of some sort was too easy. But maybe that was the point. Natasha decides to listen to what the others were saying instead, gathering information and dissecting it like she was trained to.


	6. Chapter 6

T’Challa does not want to move, does not want to function, but he was stuck in the unfortunate position as King. All his life he has wanted to be King, to be able to prove himself as both a leader and an omega and now that he was in that position he wanted nothing more than to take it back. Of course he had considered the circumstances in which he would take over, but he never imagined it would have anything to do with his father’s death. He assumed that his father would grow old and step down, not that he would be… be… He shakes his head, unwilling to think of the circumstances of his father’s death.

And now… now he was supposed to solve the crime committed. That would be fine- he was certainly angry enough to want to prosecute the responsible party- the problem was that everyone seemed to have already decided they found the perpetrator. He did not want to believe Tony was guilty for personal reasons, but the reason he did not believe Tony was guilty was due to a discrepancy of time. He examined and re-examined his stance, checking for bias but each time he passed over the evidence the timeframe did not add up. The explosion was far too close to the time he and Tony had left the forest and T’Challa watched him walk in the opposite direction of his father’s room. He knew his home well- Tony would not have been able to simply go down another hallway to end up in his father’s wing.

The rough timeframe that T’Challa made- and the one the Dora Milaje have already agreed was accurate- meant that Tony could not have been behind his father’s assassination because he would have had to be in two places at once. Unless he invented some sort of teleportation device that was not possible. Tony might be a genius but T’Challa had a sneaking suspicion his inventions were not _that_ advanced. The problem was to convince the Dora Milaje that he as correct and then find who was actually responsible for his father’s murder and he knew full well he was going to be told that he was not seeing things correctly. They could very well be right but he doubted they were seeing things correctly- Wakanda is a tight knit country, the entire population was now in mourning over their lost leader. It would be foolish to assume anyone here could be objective but they had to try, otherwise they would end up persecuting the wrong person. That was not the kind of legacy T’Challa wanted to make for himself of his country.

*

In the defense of the Dora Milaje if Tony didn’t know for sure that he didn’t off the King of Wakanda he would have assumed he was guilty too. The evidence more than suggested that, though he certainly could have gone without the pictures to go along with said evidence. His disgust, apparently, did not indicate innocence of some sort. So now he was currently chained to a table repeating the same damn answers to the questions the Dora Milaje had for him. The only thing that has changed was the answers to any technical questions they had, which they all took as a sign of guilt instead of knowledge on how to build a fucking bomb. Of _course_ he knew how to make use of various materials, he worked in weapons for longer than he didn’t- that didn’t make him guilty of anything. Well, it did but none of that was relevant to Wakanda or the Dora Milaje.

So when T’Challa walks in looking admittedly quite terrifying he sits up a little, hoping that at least he would consider Tony’s innocence. “You have seen the pictures?” T’Challa asks and Tony nods, jaw clenching a bit at the memories he would rather not have. “How long would it have taken you to create the kind of bomb used in the explosion?” he asks.

“Depends. If it was already made all I’d have to do is place it in the right location, but I don’t know how I’d get past the Dora Milaje. They’re pretty fucking diligent. If I already had the materials it’d take me at least a couple hours to put everything together and then however long it’d take to put the bomb in place. If I had to get the materials to make it it’d take at least a day, probably more so I didn’t want to look suspicious.” He debates on adding more for a moment, mostly that he didn’t do this, but the look on T’Challa’s face suggested he didn’t want to hear it and Tony didn’t blame him.

T’Challa nods, “and do you know when the bomb went off? What time?” T’Challa clarifies.

Tony thinks for a moment and finally shrugs, “I don’t know, not long after we got out of the forest. I barely had time to lay down before I heard the explosion and ended up dragged out of my room.” They worked way faster than any police system Tony was used to.

“Do you even know where my father’s room is?” T’Challa asks.

“No fucking clue. Houses are houses, outside of tracking down the library I didn’t feel the need to look around. I mean I grew up in a mansion, no offense but this isn’t exactly that much more impressive. Outside is far more impressive. And scary, you guys have some very messed up spiders.” He could do without ever running into those creepy tree spiders ever again unless he was with Rhodey because then it would be almost worth it just to see him run screaming.

“America has Brock Rumlow so do not complain about the spiders. At least the spiders can be exterminated. You are a genius- why all but write your name in my father’s assassination?” T’Challa asks.

“Fair point on Rumlow, but technically he can be exterminated if you have no qualms with murder. I didn’t kill your father, though, and if I did I wouldn’t have used an explosion. My father was killed in an explosion- why would I ever recreate that for someone else? Not to mention the basic stupidity of the previous weapons expert using a bomb to kill someone.” It was also far too dramatic for his tastes, which was saying something considering he happened to be a very dramatic person. However a simple gun shot would do and it wouldn’t leave such a mess and it was far more predictable.

T’Challa examines him for a long moment before he seems to let his guard down some. “I do not think you are guilty because the timeline does not match and because I know you at least well enough that you do not bother putting much thought into things that do not interest you. That means I know you have no interest in Wakandan politics outside of reading about the subject. You would not have done this if for no other reason than having no motivation to care to kill the King.”

He wasn’t wrong. Tony had a bad habit of ignoring things he thought were useless either to him or in general and the King of Wakanda definitely fell into the things about Wakanda that he deemed useless to him. T’Chaka seemed like a decent enough man who obviously cared about his children even if he had an odd way of showing it at least to T’Challa, but that was pretty much all Tony knew about him because he didn’t care to learn more. The information was useless to him because he hadn’t considered himself much of a major player in the competition for T’Challa’s affections even if he maybe ignored that he was a clear favorite. Whoops.

“Thank you. But that does beg the question of _why_ , exactly, someone went out of their way to make it look like I did this. I mean the explosion pattern is pretty unique to weapons I’ve made even if they’re a little off.” The burn patterns were too wide, and the temperature of the explosion would have run hotter than any similar bombs that he’s designed given the scorch patterns. Still, the bomb was far too similar to his designs to ignore and that meant someone was framing him for assassinating a _King_ in a _foreign country_. But _why_? Sure he had plenty of enemies, probably even a few that were currently in the country, but none that he thought disliked him enough to frame him for murder.

“It is an easy way to remove you from the competition for my affections, plus it seems that no one else here likes you outside of Natasha. They find you arrogant and full of yourself,” T’Challa says.

“Seems like an extreme method of taking out the competition. If they wanted to do that they could have showed you videos of me five years ago. Seriously, eighteen year old me was a twat.” Thankfully he grew out of most of the bad habits that his younger self had, which really only made him wonder how embarrassed he’d be of himself in five years. He’d probably be pretty embarrassed that he entered a competition to marry an omega without ever considering that it might end in marriage only to get framed for assassinating the King. He was a little embarrassed of that now, honestly.

“I have already seen you’re embarrassing teen phases- I also like research. You make a point about the methodology being extreme though, but why else would anyone want my father dead and why else frame you specifically?” T’Challa asks. Tony opens his mouth to ask whether or not he’s considered that someone from Wakanda was behind this but thinks better of it. The accusation would probably only get him a defensive comment about his country’s politics not supporting that. T’Challa would consider it on his own time.

“Maybe someone just hates me enough to try and kill me off via Wakandan laws,” Tony suggests. That seemed pretty reasonable, everyone knew Wakanda wasn’t fond of foreigners, it was a logical conclusion that they wouldn’t be super happy if a foreigner killed their King- maybe even enough to kill off said foreigner.

“Do you think anyone here hates you that much?” T’Challa asks.

Tony shrugs, “the hell if I know.”

*

T’Challa sighs as Shuri goes on _another_ rant about Tony. “Enough,” he says eventually, surprised when Shuri immediately stops talking. It was jarring to him, the sudden power that he has been saddled with. Okoye questioned him too, but when he told her that he knew what he was doing she stopped talking immediately and accepted it when she would not have before.

He resents that people listen to him now because it took his father’s assassination to earn that respect. And even then it was backhanded. He is King; people are supposed to listen and they heard him out out of respect for the position, not respect for him. He is not certain that he would ever gain respect as a person because, as much as he did not want to admit it, cultural assumptions around omegas still made him out to be lesser.

“I am not a fool, Tony is with the rest of the alphas in their makeshift prison, not roaming free. I have not completely eliminated the possibility that he may be involved, but the evidence does not add up,” he says.

“ _What_ are you talking about?” Shuri snaps, “ _all_ the evidence matches up. That is why he is guilty! You are just clouded by personal opinions!”

“And you are not?” he snaps, “do not insult me by making a subtle claim that you are more objective. Our father was just assassinated, as if you are more objective than I am! Neither one of us would ever be able to view this without feeling so do not try and act as if my feelings interfere with how I am examining the evidence here as if you have no personal investment. And the evidence does not add up- I was with Tony before the explosion went off and it would have taken too long for him to have placed the bomb and get back to his room. Yes, it is entirely possible that he could still be involved but I do not think that he is. We are missing something.” There is some piece of evidence that was not there- the motivation behind his father’s assassination is as unclear as who committed the crime. Without at least a motivation to work with it would be difficult to find the perpetrator.

Shuri frowns, “that bomb went off in the middle of the night. What were you doing with Tony in the middle of the night?” she asks, nearly accuses.

“That is none of your business. What I do with my free time is not something that is up for discussion simply because you do not like the possibility that I would do something you do not agree with. The point here is that I know for certain where Tony was and when- and knowing that means that I know it would have been impossible for him to have killed our father unless he had an accomplice. In which case we need to figure out why _two_ people would want our father dead.” He did not want to deal with this at all but unfortunately he did not get a choice.

“Resources, T’Challa. _Obviously_ ,” Shuri says.

“Then why not target our entire family? Why only kill the King when there was equal opportunity to kill you and myself as well? That would make the country _far_ more chaotic and therefore easier to conquer if that were the case. We are missing something,” he repeats. He would like to ask Tony more questions but he could not involve a suspect in his own line of questioning, not until he had concrete evidence that Tony was not involved. As it was he has already said too much. He sighs and leans back in his chair, looking over to Shuri to see if she had something more to add. She looks away and he shakes his head, “if you have nothing more to add than go,” he says.


	7. Chapter 7

“So, what stupid thing did you do that got us all arrested?” Natasha asks after the Dora Milaje leave him in his comfy new prison cell.

“ _I_ didn’t do anything. One of you assholes killed the king and framed me for it,” Tony snaps, “so I would greatly appreciate if you confessed so I can get out of here and go home in peace.” This was a terrible idea to begun with even if he did like T’Challa quite a bit. He was still confused as to why Obi thought this was a good idea to begin with; it wasn’t as if they were going to gain anything from Wakanda.

Natasha starts laughing, clapping along with her clearly humorless laugh. “Good fucking going, asshole. And I don’t mean you Tony; you don’t have the heart to kill anyone. Not up close anyways.” Yeah, he could have done without the subtle reminder that he was technically a mass murderer but Natasha was funny like that. She was all sharp edges and wit when she wanted to be, and when she didn’t she was actually pretty funny and soft. Not the kind of woman Tony would want to mess with- too much like Pepper. Or Obi for that matter, except Obi was more of an ass than someone with sharp edges.

“Thanks for that. To the fucknut that framed me for murder, though, I really hope you don’t expect leniency. I looked up Wakandan laws and they do _not_ like foreigners on the best of days, let alone when they kill the damn king.”

*

T’Challa literally _feels_ the shift of dynamic as he puts what everyone else perceives as a hold on his father’s murder investigation. Two days, that was how long it took for the respect for his position of King to wear off and for people to remember that he is an omega. Less for Shuri, who questioned him from the beginning.

“I am only suggesting you examine your biases-” Nakia says and T’Challa clenches his jaw.

“Say it,” he says finally, annoyed with her skirting around the real problem here.

“What?” she asks, frowning.

“You do not care about my personal biases- none of you do. I am sure you all remember that you are almost as close to my father as I was. The whole country was, that is how we work. Not one of us can possibly act as if we are completely removed from the situation and none of us would assume that we should be. So unless you have been spending too much time with Americans and adopting _their_ views of objectivity there is no reason for you to tell me my emotions should not be present. Yours certainly are. So say it- you think I am incompetent because I am an omega.” They stare at each other for several tense moments before she finally looks away, clearly embarrassed. Good, she should be. Everyone who was currently questioning why he was trying to conduct a proper investigation should be. He had no desire to prosecute the wrong person.

Plus, as Nakia pointed out, he had reason to not want Tony to be guilty but he is aware of that and he is also aware that he could be wrong. But he still felt that the evidence condemning Tony was too convenient, almost as if it were staged…

“T’Challa,” someone, Okoye, interrupts. “I took your theory on Tony Stark’s innocence into consideration and re-examined his belongings. For one it seems that they were not examined to begin with, which is curious considering I specifically requested that someone go through them. But that is not relevant for the time being. I managed to break into his tablet and find old weapons designs on it, one of the designs closely matched the bomb used to kill T’Chaka but unsurprisingly Tony’s design was far more efficient. Given the construction of each design there is not enough variation to assume the design was different, and if the design was not different there is no reason to assume that Tony would build a lesser bomb. Actually given his design habits he appears to be a perfectionist, which alone suggests he may not have done this.”

Yes, T’Challa knew a little about his perfectionism. He asked Tony about designs once given that they both shared an interest in inventing and he was more than surprised by Tony’s extensive testing process. He tried a few things until his design worked the way it was intended to but Tony did absurd things like throw phones from great heights to test durability. In his defense T’Challa threw Tony’s phone at a wall full force and all it did was bounce off and land on the floor with a flat ‘clack’. It was very anti climatic.

“So what you are telling me is that someone has not taken orders to properly examine evidence in a murder investigation, and that upon going over the missed work you discovered possibly evidence that the initial suspect may not be behind my father’s murder after all. Hmm. I suggest going over all the evidence we currently have to see if we have missed something. I will interview Tony myself,” he says. Both Nakia and Okoye look uncomfortable with that but neither of them spoke out against the idea.

When he has two of the Dora Milaje bring Tony out of his cell for questioning he is more than surprised to find Jujube following along beside him. “She found where I was earlier and decided my lap was a great place to sleep. My ass is sore from sitting in the same position for too long,” Tony complains, wincing when he sits across from T’Challa. Jujube abandons Tony to come sit at his feet, leaning her furry little body against his leg. He would like to pet her but this is an interrogation, he had to maintain some sort of professionalism. The cat choosing to spend time with Tony was certainly something he wanted to know about though, when it was more relevant to him to know.

“After you left me the night my father died where did you go?” he asks, earning _looks_ from both of the Dora Milaje in the room. He ignores the obvious silent judgment he was receiving from both of them to listen to Tony’s answer instead.

“Back to my room. Nothing really eventful happened, I walked back into the house, pissed off that Polish guy, and went to go to bed only to be rudely interrupted by an explosion and being arrested,” Tony says. The Dora Milaje give him disgusted looks but T’Challa knows that Tony is not being insensitive to his father’s murder. He simply has a bad habit of using comedy as a method of deflecting his emotions- something T’Challa has noted long before now.

“The Polish guy?” T’Challa asks, remembering a conversation he had not long ago with his father. _I thought I saw a ghost the other night but it turned out to be a small man from Poland_. Hmm. It may mean nothing, though, and realistically Tony has had enough time to make something up to deflect suspicion from himself.

“Yeah. Didn’t look impressed when he caught a whiff of you on me,” Tony says.

“ _Why_ was your scent on him?” the braver of the two Dora Milaje asks, apparently deeming it appropriate to completely derail the interrogation of a man suspected of killing the King to ask about T’Challa’s potential sex life. He was not having that.

“I am curious, did you ever ask my father about his sex life or did you assume that he was more than capable of picking out his own mate without the input of the Dora Milaje? He had two wives, I am sure that you would have had plenty of time to ask about his mating habits but you did not ask him about why he smelled like an omega did you? Of course not. So do not ask invasive questions about my possible sex life because you deem my actions inappropriate and do _not_ ask such ignorant questions in the middle of an interrogation with the man you have all assumed is guilty of killing the King. In what logical world would my potential sex life take precedence over the assassination of the King?” he snaps. No logical world was the answer.

“He was not capable of murder,” the other Dora says, interrupting the interrogation herself.

“Excuse me?” T’Challa asks, purposefully tempering his tone to sound more pleasant given that he actually wanted to hear what she had to say.

“I am not certain what happened between you but it would have certainly involved scenting. Alphas’ brains basically turn to goo when they scent omegas; they barely have an IQ higher than a particularly stupid goat. He should not have had the focus or brainpower to carry out a under plan, he probably could not remember his own name due to steeping in his own idiot hormones,” she says. T’Challa’s eyebrows lift because she is right- Tony would have been too caught up in T’Challa’s scent to even be useful in a murder plot let alone the driving force. Had he been involved he would not have scented T’Challa, unless of course that was also designed to deflect suspicion… but no, there was no way Tony would have known T’Challa would have shown up exactly where he was.

“I resent that,” Tony says, “alphas do not turn into stupid goats. Scientifically speaking we _do_ lose basically all cognitive abilities but only for a short period of time. Then we’re mostly just… high- it’s the easiest way to describe the feeling. But we do have our cognitive abilities back, they’re just extremely impaired.”

“Are you suggesting that you _were_ capable of killing the King?” the Dora that initially questioned why T’Challa would smell like him says.

“No, I’m just saying it’s scientifically inaccurate to say I’m a stupid goat. I’d be more like Jujube on a good day,” Tony says. “Someone else who was not me killed the King. And honestly, why would I do that anyways? I read your laws, I’d be signing my death warrant and I have no desire to commit suicide by Wakandan law.”

“Good question. You did mention that your business partner had an interest in the country though, you may bot have motivation but he would,” T’Challa points out. Tony could easily be furthering his business partner’s agenda.

“Why would he frame be for the murder? And I’m here; I sure as hell wouldn’t frame myself. I’m a genius and stupid goat mind or not I would not implicate myself in murder. Also that bomb was not something I made. I could tell just looking at the pictures that it wasn’t anything I designed. Someone used a knockoff, probably fucking Hammer tech. That idiot has assumed he can design as well as me since MIT even when literally every piece of evidence does not support that,” Tony says.

All fair points in T’Challa’s opinion. “Out of curiosity how much does he hate you?”

“If you’re asking if he hates me enough to frame me for murder, yeah, he does. But so do a lot of people, shit, there are people _here_ that hate me enough to frame me for murder. I might be a perfectly charming and lovely person but most people don’t agree. It doesn’t help that I have a past of warmongering and profiting off death, but still. Point is a lot of people hate me; a lot of people hate most of the alphas here. People in visible positions like ours tend to be catch alls for any hate because we’re easily recognizable, doesn’t much matter of we did the thing people are pissed about or not. If you’re going to investigate everyone who wants me dead that’s a huge amount of people,” Tony points out.

“The number of people that would be able to successfully infiltrate Wakanda, illegally smuggle in the tools and supplies to build a bomb, and execute an assassination is probably a far shorter list. I will get you paper,” T’Challa says.

*

Tony savors the feeling of the bed he was currently on, happy to have been released from the makeshift prison he was in. A few other alphas have also been cleared, including Natasha, and most were headed back to their own countries. Tony, however, had been asked politely to stay behind given his own sort-of involvement in the crime at hand. The Dora Milaje might have asked but he knew damn well he wasn’t going home so he agreed and figured in the meantime he could hang out with the abundance of cats in Wakanda.

“Sorry about this,” T’Challa says from the doorway.

“Not your fault. Are… are you okay?” Tony asks then shakes his head, “stupid question. Of course you aren’t okay, but will you be okay?”

T’Challa smiles bitterly, “you know you are the first one to ask me that. Everyone else has been too busy assuming that because I am an omega who happens to be fond of you I must be rooting for your innocence. I was not, I simply had no desire to kill the wrong man.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up because he didn’t take T’Challa for the killing type. By all means he seemed pretty merciful. “You’re planning on executing your father’s murderer?” It’s a question technically, but it comes out more like a statement. “You didn’t strike me as the type to believe in capital punishment.”

“I am not, but there are exceptions to every rule. I have made an exception,” he says almost harshly and with that he walks away. Tony wants to go after him, to tell him vengeance is a useless endeavor, that it won’t make anything better even if he does kill off his father’s murderer. He’d know, he’s been there and he sent his father’s murderers sky high with the weapons they stole from him and his company and it made him feel worse, not better. But he also knows that when Yinsen tried to tell him that vengeance was useless he shut him down, too caught up in his own hatred and hurt over his father’s murder so he lets T’Challa go.

If T’Challa asked his opinion he’d give it, but if he didn’t he’d leave it because he knew that T’Challa wouldn’t listen if he tried anyways. So he sighs and settles in to enjoy his bed now that he had it, pondering who exactly wanted to frame him for murder. Out of his list Ivan Vankov would be his top pick, but Vankov has been in prison for over a year. When Tony converted the company over to clean energy Vankov popped up claiming Tony stole the design- impossible since he invented it in a cave so he could power a metal exoskeleton weapon he intended to use to escape captivity. But he fought hard anyways, to the point out getting violent and out and out trying to kill Tony. Rhodey saved his ass from him too, now that Tony thought about it.

He was so sending Rhodey a ‘thanks for making sure random assholes don’t kill me’ basket for his efforts. Vankov ended up in jail, he lost his case against Tony, and it turned out his design was different than Tony’s anyways so the whole damn legal battle was useless to both of them. Tony had been some pissed to find out the only reason Vankov even _had_ a vendetta against Tony was because his father stole Vankov’s father’s designs. So once again he was thought of as his dear old dad when hello, he is a totally different person. But unlike Hammer, who is an incompetent twit, or Obi, who was his business partner, Vankov was brilliant and actually capable of framing him for murder. And unlike Obi in particular he had a real motive. He has come to see Tony as the cause of all his life’s problems instead of his really, _really_ bad hair.

Obi… Tony only really added him to the list because technically he stood to gain a lot if Tony off and died, but he didn’t actually think he had anything to do with this and he told T’Challa that. Vankov, for sure, was the top contender. Then Hammer thought Tony was convinced that he was too much of a fool to pull this off successfully. Beyond that there were a lot of other people with weaker motives, mostly annoyed politicians who didn’t like when Tony fact-checked their useless and terrible platforms.


	8. Chapter 8

Natasha perches on Tony’s bed looking pleased with herself for being released along with quite a few other alphas that obviously had nothing to do with T’Chaka’s murder. “So when’s the wedding?” she asks, grinning.

Tony frowns, “the what?” Rhodey had asked him the same damn thing this morning and gave him the exact look of confusion that Natasha was currently giving him.

“On a scale of one to ten how clueless are you to basic human interactions?” she asks.

“I’d rank myself pretty high but something tells me you’d disagree with that.” Rhodey certainly did and he, for one, resented that.

“Yeah I would. You are clearly useless in deciphering human interaction because T’Challa has had a thing for you since day one and you were _completely oblivious_ to his attentions and everyone else’s jealousy. I think that made him like you more, honestly,” Natasha says, head tilted to the side.

“Maybe everyone else should have played hard to get,” he suggests cockily, nose in the air. It was hardly his fault he was naturally more appealing.

“If you played hard to get maybe, you’re just genuinely unaware of the dirty looks and scoffs you got frequently. I’d pin it to arrogance but it doesn’t fit the behavior well enough- plus you have plenty of arrogance elsewhere. More like… like you’re used to the way everyone has been treating you so you didn’t actually know there was a difference in how you were being perceived,” she says. She examines him and he fights the uncomfortable feeling of being observed without really knowing what she was seeing, just what she was willing to tell him.

But to be fair she wasn’t wrong, he was plenty used to jealousy in all areas. “Are you aware of who I am? The kind of life I’ve lived? People would kill to me be or fuck me over, and they have now apparently. T’Chaka’s murder does look like I did it, too much like I did it actually. So yeah, I’m pretty used to the jealousy and dismissal because that’s pretty much all I’ve known. Still don’t think T’Challa favors me though.” Jujube did for sure, the cat has taken to following him around while T’Challa went off to do King things or whatever it was he did with himself all day.

Natasha rolls her eyes at him, “Tony you knew he had a cat and the cat’s name before any of us even realized how extensive the importance of cats were to Wakandans. Plus you figured out a bunch of other personal details too- the rest of us were barely able to hold a conversation. You two have a lot of natural chemistry and it’s hard to compete with that,” she says honestly.

Well alright then. He figured T’Challa stuck around because he was the only one without a motive to be there and that had to make him more appealing company than anyone else. Maybe not though… “Fine, maybe we have chemistry but I refuse to believe that scenting made me less intelligent than a goat,” he mumbles.

“You scented each other? Oh come _on_ , when the hell did that happen?” she asks, obviously annoyed with this fact.

“The night T’Chaka was killed- that was half the reason that T’Challa thought I was innocent. Timeline didn’t match up.” Natasha’s eyes basically double in size as she leans forward in interest.

“And _what_ were you doing with T’Challa in the middle of the night,” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Why are people so obsessed with out sex life-”

“You two slept together!” Natasha shouts, squealing in what Tony _thinks_ is happiness.

“No, we didn’t but everyone seems to be happy to give us a sex life. Kinda wish there was a sex life to be had, seriously, have you _seen_ his ass? Mm. Anyways that’s not the point, I don’t sleep well, never have, so I was working on some designs and he showed up and we chatted a little alright. We just scented each other and I totally disagree with the suggestion that it made me develop a sudden case of stupid goat brain. And why are you happy about this exactly? Shouldn’t you be like… at least a little irritated that you are losing this whole competition thing?” he asks. Assuming she was right about him winning this whole thing without actually knowing what was going on. Honestly he’d be impressed with himself at that point because he will have reached a new level of clueless. Pepper would not be impressed if this were the case because she’s against him even being here let alone going off and getting _married_.

Natasha shrugs, “I was never really here to win T’Challa’s affections, Russia is a political disaster right now. There was no way I was winning, even if I sort of hoped that I would. I just wanted out of Russia and then you came along and I _love_ some good drama so I figured I’d stick around to watch. So you scented each other, what else?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows at him again.

Tony rolls his eyes at her.

*

T’Challa takes comfort in the small circles that Tony was rubbing on his back, even if it bothered him slightly. Tony should not be the only one willing to show him comfort- the entire country was mourning at the moment and everyone… they expected him to set his feelings aside to deal with them, with his father’s murderer. He understood why they felt that way of course, but he also knew how unfairly he was being treated. In the past when this has happened there was a period of time in which the King was allowed to grieve. His father had had time to grieve for both of his wives and his father and he was not granted such a period. Instead people expected him to pick himself up and lead the country regardless of his own feelings. Feelings, if they belonged to an omega anyways, were not desirable. It did not matter that he had more reason to grieve than near everyone in the country.

“You’re either holding up really, really well or you’re damn good at hiding the fact that you want to fall apart. Which is it?” Tony asks softly. He stays silent for a long few moments, unsure if Tony would judge him just as harshly as the rest of his country was. He has done his research; America had a more brutal history with omegas than Wakanda did given the histories of omegas that belonged to other minority groups in particular. At least Wakanda did not assume that illegal scientific experiments were perfectly fine so long as the subjects were black omegas. But there was no evidence that Tony believed what his culture told him about omegas; actually it appeared that he was rather progressive in his thoughts even by Wakanda’s standards.

“I… I am not certain what to feel,” he says finally. There was just too much happening at once. His father’s murder, his coronation planning, investigation, grief, dealing with the damn alphas his father invited here to begin with, the rest of his country… After all of that he wasn’t certain which direction his feelings were going in and it was irritating and frightening.

“It’s hard, when you lose a parent. You sort of assume they’ll last forever, or at least until they’re old, and when they go young and in an unexpected way…” he shakes his head, “it’s difficult to know what to do with that.” His words are honest, real. It’s refreshing after all of the messes he has had to clean up as of late, and it was far different than the strange lack of empathy from his country.

“What happened?” he asks. They both know what he’s talking about even if he doesn’t specify what he was referring to.

“When I was seventeen my mom was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver. It ruined my dad, which pissed me off because he was an abusive piece of shit. What right did he have to mourn a woman he treated like shit? And Howard, he died when I was twenty-one in an explosion but you knew that. Terrorist attack, probably somewhat random. I ended up getting kidnapped for and held hostage for three months so I could build a particularly dangerous bomb. Long story short I built myself a sort of suit- a metal exoskeleton- and blew the terrorist up and flew myself the hell away from the cave they had me stuck in. That was when Rhodey found me, drawn to the explosion because, and this is a quote, ‘some things just scream Tony Stark.’ To be fair he was right,” Tony says, letting out a small, bitter laugh.

T’Challa frowns because he has not heard much about Tony’s late mother until now, nor has he heard anything about Howard Stark and domestic violence. “That is a lot more trauma than what I am dealing with,” he says eventually. He was hardly being held hostage by terrorists to build a weapon; his country is just being insensitive. It was hardly similar, especially since he was certain that the terrorists holding him hostage would not have treated Tony very well.

“I’m not so sure. I mean you’re mom is obviously not around so something happened there, and I don’t this being thrust into Kingship right after your father, who was the previous King, is something that would be super fun. Besides, it’s not a competition. Parents dying sucks no matter which way you have it happen or what happens to you after. There really isn’t much that can make that worse for a person,” Tony says, shrugging. Maybe not but T’Challa would assume that being held captive for three months by terrorists would certainly make that trauma worse. He does not say anything though; they both already knew that was true.

“My mother was killed when I was a child. I barely remember her because I was so young and the attempt at creating political unrest- the goal of the group of people that killed her- was unsuccessful. My father remarried and they had Shuri, but I was never very close to her. She also died a few years ago of a terminal illness but that was nothing like this,” he says honestly. It was not that he did not care for his stepmother, but they were not close. Shuri was actually less close to her mother than he was but she had held up surprisingly well through the loss. So had his father and he knew his country was expecting him to be the same, and that any hint that he had any emotions at all would quickly devolve into him being an over emotional and incompetent leader. Or, on the flip side, if he did not show any emotion he would likely be accused of being a heartless shrew. There was no way he was going to come out of this winning.

Tony remains silent for several long moments before he speaks again. “It gets easier, not the loss, but dealing with it. You get used to them not being there and when that first happens it’s going to hurt like hell, and the first everything after they die is awful. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, all of it will be ruined with the obvious missing person. But eventually you’ll get used to them not being there with you and that makes it easier.” His words are quiet, solemn, and T’Challa hates that because he does not want those words to be true.

“I do not want to get used to my father being gone,” he says in a tone that was perhaps more petulant than what was called for.

At that Tony sits back, “I get that, I do. But you don’t get a choice in the matter- when something in your life stops being there you get used to its loss and people are no different. How else could you go on if you didn’t get used to the person you lost not being there?” T’Challa clenches his jaw because that was horrible, forgetting how important those people were, getting used to them not being there like they were not important at some point but… but Tony is right. Getting used to the loss was the only way to move on, even if T’Challa had no interest in ever getting used to his father being gone forever.

*

Wakanda was really odd. Tony had gone to the library specifically to look up how Wakanda dealt with the deaths of their leaders because the way they were dealing with T’Challa was… odd. Turns out the history books proved his observations right because expecting the new King to replace the last was unheard of- there was usually a three month grace period in which they had time to grieve. In the case of assassination it appeared to be less but T’Challa hadn’t been granted _any_ time to grieve before he was expected to solve his father’s murder, deal with all the alphas still remaining, and fulfill all his kingly duties all at once or else. He was already receiving criticism for not solving his father’s murder fast enough and what little data Tony could find on the solve rate for political assassinations suggested that T’Challa was actually far ahead of the typical three year schedule.

“You really did all that research just to determine that Wakanda has prejudice against me because of my omega status?” T’Challa asks, looking surprised. “You would not have needed that much evidence, you know that the world as a whole does not like omegas. Wakanda is no different.”

“Except it is. I don’t know what omegas lives here are like and I’m not going to jump to conclusions based off my own cultural assumptions. What America thinks is useless because this is Wakanda, you’re going to do things differently. But yeah, turns out you guys also suck when it comes to treating omegas fairly.” Sure he could have assumed that was the reason from the beginning, it was the only obvious difference between T’Challa and previous kings, but for all he knew there was something else that might have made T’Challa distinct. After going through his research and examining T’Challa’s general position it was pretty obvious that his initial thoughts were actually right. “Oh, and you’re way ahead of the typical solve rate for political assassinations so you can tell Wakanda to stop being a bunch of assholes about not solving things fast enough. Oh, and get that grieving period that you’re entitled to.”

T’Challa tilts his head to the side, “you did _that_ much research?” he asks.

“Well yeah, I didn’t know if Wakanda actually was treating you differently than other kings so I had to look up how things usually worked around the death of a king. Once I established that yeah, things are actually functioning strangely based on Wakandan standards rather than American standards I had to find the _why_. The only big difference between you and other kings is your being an omega though. I mean you’re also a lot younger than the typical king, which might be playing it’s part in perceptions, and you did go to Oxford for a year but that’s irrelevant because I would have noticed discrimination based off that sooner. And Shuri went off to boarding school in Asia so she would also be feeling potential effects of that and Wakanda doesn’t seem to care about her at all. Anyways, to make a long story short I figured I’d pick the biggest criticism of you so far- not solving your father’s murder fast enough- and figure out how long these things usually take. Turns out you’re way ahead of the game by literal years.”

It irritated Tony because it was cruel to put that kind of pressure on someone who just lost a very important person to them. He knew what it was like to have that happen, how hard things were when he got back from Afghanistan and people assumed that he’d not only function completely normally, but that he would be exactly like his father too. But he and Howard Stark had had far too much in common for him to be comfortable with at that point in time and he was never, ever going to be anything like that man again. So he basically scrapped his company and started over, nearly ruining SI in the process. But he has more than recovered now, and he is certain that T’Challa would recover too. And quickly if his ability to investigate continues on it’s impressive rate.

“That is… that is a lot,” T’Challa says eventually. “That is probably one of the sweetest things that anyone has ever done for me.”

Tony tilts his head to the side, “I was just trying to figure out what was going on using Wakandan knowledge instead of assuming people were being unfair dicks by my own standards. That isn’t sweet, it’s just me being curious and figuring stuff out.”

“But you did it because you did not like the way people were treating me, yes?” T’Challa asks, eyebrow rising.

“Yeah, of course. Seriously, people are being really unfair.” It took some time for him to figure out what the hell was even happening due to the whole language barrier thing but once he did he was _not_ impressed with the headlines. It made no sense for T’Challa to have solved what was increasingly a more complicated sounding crime in less than a full week. It wasn’t as if anyone else was investigating faster so Tony thinks that unless the news outlets figure out who killed the king they could fuck off.

T’Challa reaches out and gently brushes his fingers along Tony’s cheek, “thank you,” he says with meaning. His fingers linger there for a moment before he tips Tony’s head up and he leans forward pressing a chaste kiss to his lips.


	9. Chapter 9

“They think you did _what_?” Pepper asks, her voice just a bit grainy over the video call as her eyes growing wide. Personally Tony was just happy that he _got_ his tech back even if he was certain it was bugged. He couldn’t prove it but he had a feeling- the Dora Milaje were not as convinced of his innocence as T’Challa.

“Killed the king. They think I killed the king. Be honest, you knew something would go wrong with my name on it here,” Tony says. She gave him the side eye for a solid week before he went but he assured her that he was a terrible marriage candidate and he’d be sent back quickly.

“Did you? Kill the king?” Pepper asks.

“Excuse you, _no_ , I did not kill the damn king! I like to hope you have more faith in me than that,” he mumbles. Come on, why would he _kill the king of Wakanda_? What the hell would he even stand to gain from that aside from either a swift death or spending the rest of his life in some Wakandan hellhole? They were nice to their own population prison-wise- T’Challa had explained that they literally could not afford a high proportion of their population in prison given how dependent they were on only their own population to run things. High incarceration rates meant jobs going undone so prison was more reform than anything, at least if you weren’t a foreigner. Then they didn’t give a damn about you and from what Tony read he would have been stuck in something like a detention center to rot until he died. Not his cup of tea, he preferred T.V in his residences at least.

“Well you wouldn’t have done it on purpose, but you do have a weird habit of getting into some really… explosive situations. Sometimes literally. But why do they think you killed the king?” she asks.

“That’s what I need your help with actually. T’Challa is pretty convinced I’ve been framed and I damn well know I’ve been framed. But I have no idea _who_ framed me or how they could have even pulled this off considering how suspicious literally everyone here is. Seriously, they barely let jujubes into the country let alone murderers.”

“Then someone in the country was in on it,” Pepper says, ever so logical.

“Tell them that. I can guarantee it will go over horribly however obvious that seems to me. I’ve left that for T’Challa to figure out on his own, or the Dora Milaje, whichever figures it out first. Point is I need you to do some sleuthing so I can figure out what the hell is going on here, and JARVIS too. Between the two of you you can cover all the usual suspects that crop up when things go wrong in my life.”

Pepper nods and starts jotting down notes as he tells her what’s going on while they go over the usual list of names. Tony decides to cover Hammer just to make sure that twit didn’t suddenly gain a scrap of intelligence. Pepper decides to cover Vankov and a cursory check of Obi given that she was in the same building as him and checking his computer would be easy. Obi would be the easiest elimination next to Hammer. Tony still had his money on Vankov.

When he tells Rhodey what’s going on he gets the typical ‘are you kidding me’ look. “What? I didn’t so it,” Tony says almost defensively. He needed new friends considering they all thought he’d kill the damn king of Wakanda.

“I know you didn’t do it, but of _course_ you managed to get yourself framed,” Rhodey says.

“Uh, excuse you, I have nothing to do with me getting framed thank you. So I did not ‘get myself framed’ I just got framed and I need a favor. Pepper’s looking into the usual suspects and JARVIS is doing his own thing but do you mind looking into some of the more international stuff?” Rhodey knew his way around systems that Pepper was more unfamiliar with and even if he didn’t he happened to also be a genius engineer so he could figure out any problems a lot faster than Pepper. “JARVIS can help you too,” he adds because JARVIS was a faster hacker than Rhodey would be. He was almost faster than Tony but Tony knew tricks that JARVIS didn’t.

Rhodey sighs, “how do you always get into these messes?” Rhodey asks.

“Is that a yes?” Tony asks, grinning.

“Yeah that’s a yes. I sort of already started looking into things when I hadn’t heard from you for awhile and Wakanda shied away from the media so I’ll continue following up on that stuff I guess. JARVIS can go all the grunt work because I don’t feel like it,” Rhodey says.

“See this is why he doesn’t like working with you,” Tony tells him, clicking his tongue in disapproval.

“He’s an AI, he can’t like or dislike anything,” Rhodey points out.

“Reason number two on why he doesn’t like working with you, you totally ignore his awesome personality,” Tony says, nose in the air.

“It’s be a lot more awesome if he wasn’t such an ass when he felt like it. Did you program him to be a pain in the ass?” Rhodey asks.

“Only to people he doesn’t like. And people I don’t like. He’s mean to Hammer and that makes me happy.” Once JARVIS hacked into Hammer’s systems and left design notes on everything he was trying to make and sent him a ‘you tried’ card when his designs still failed to live up to Tony’s. This was why he loved his AI so much, JARVIS knew what was up and _he_ never forgot Pepper’s birthday no matter how many times Tony did and he even remembered to send presents. Or to tell Pepper to but herself a present.

“You should reprogram your AI to like me because I’m your best friend and I think I deserve some AI love,” Rhodey says, “tell him I found you after you were missing for three months. He didn’t do that because he is not as awesome as me.”

Tony snorts, shaking his head at the familiar rivalry between Rhodey and JARVIS as to who was the better friend. “JARVIS couldn’t leave the house to search for me in his defense, plus he did check a bunch of cameras and he kept Obi from snooping in my lab,” he points out.

“I _saved your life_ and you’re telling me I should think JARVIS keeping your doors locked is impressive. Oh no, no, JARVIS does not get any credit for sitting on his metaphorical ass when I busted my own behind to find you in the middle of a damn desert. You know what there was to go off of? Sand, some sand to the left, a little sand to the right, and some more goddamn sand but I still found you. JARVIS didn’t do that,” Rhodey says indignantly.

“You don’t order me pizza when I don’t feel like dealing with people,” Tony counters.

“I saved your life, if it wasn’t for me JARVIS wouldn’t be able to order your ungrateful ass pizza. I see how it is, you only like JARVIS more because you made him,” Rhodey says.

“Don’t be absurd, that’d make him kind of like my kid and I hate those. Plus you did save my life that one time even though getting permission to continue your search for me probably wouldn’t have been easy,” he says. He didn’t know how Rhodey managed given that he had been gone for three months when Rhodey _happened_ to be flying around in the area. The closest base would have put him on the _opposite_ side of the explosion but Rhodey claimed that he just knew and against their better judgment Rhodey’s men listened to him. Turned out he was right so they couldn’t really do much about it. He’s always had good senses like that, even if everyone around him tried to claim his gut feelings were wimpy omega feelings. No one dismissed Tony’s gut feelings like that so he learned to listen to Rhodey. It helped that he was rarely wrong.

“It wasn’t easy but it was worth it, you’re still alive and well because I _knew_ you wouldn’t be easy to kill. You’re like a cockroach, you can survive anything,” Rhodey jokes. Tony knows him well enough that the joke is more for his benefit than Rhodey’s. Humor was the easiest way to deal with his problems and Rhodey learned a long time ago that trying to force him out of that only led to more jokes. So he worked with it instead, cracking jokes so Tony wouldn’t run off at the first sign of emotion. Like when he found Tony and asked how the ‘funvee’ was given that he had tried, and failed, to keep Tony in line in Afghanistan. Didn’t help that Howard encouraged him and it was probably the only encouragement Tony ever got from the man. Then the disaster of revamping SI, alcoholism, and Vankov hit all at once and he somehow made it out the other side.

“Shit you’re right, I am like a cockroach. Anyways, the international stuff for this whole ‘who framed Tony for killing the king’, what have you got so far?”

*

T’Challa goes over the video footage he got from Tony’s returned tech but the play back is strange. He did not much _like_ invading Tony’s privacy but he did run into Tony earlier and he seemed to already know he was being watched, or at least he assumed he was. This was not something he agreed to- Tony is a tech genius, if he truly wanted to avoid being caught for murder bugging his technology would do nothing. He would figure out a way around the bugs because he is more than intelligent enough to do so. Instead T’Challa gets to watch an hour of him dancing around to some horrible music, a couple video calls, and he notes a few texts exchanged with his business partner who seems strangely unconcerned about Tony. Tony’s responses seem to indicate that the cool relationship between the two is a norm though so he files the information away but notes that it is less relevant.

The first video call is what gets his attention though. He watches everything all the way through and assumes that Tony must have been putting on a show with dancing that bad, he decides that he rather likes Rhodey, and that Pepper and Tony have an odd relationship. The second video does not appear to be tampered with, and the dancing is either edited to be far more awful than it originally was or it was left alone, but the first video has an odd spot. In an attempt to figure out what was throwing him off he rewatches the video to find inconsistencies. After he reviews the video twice he concludes that only one part seems to be tampered with but the content before and after the deleted section do not indicate that Tony would have said anything incriminating for him to delete. And then there was the question of _how_ though T’Challa was certainly sure he was capable of altering the information. But why make it so sloppy? Even Tony’s worst work was more put together than this.

_“That’s what I need your help with actually. T’Challa is pretty convinced I’ve been framed and I damn well know I’ve been framed. But I have no idea who framed me or how they could have even pulled this off considering how suspicious literally everyone here is. Seriously, they barely let jujubes into the country let alone murderers. Point is I need you to do some sleuthing so I can figure out what the hell is going on here, and JARVIS too. Between the two of you you can cover all the usual suspects that crop up when things go wrong in my life.”_

Halfway through the statement the audio stutters a little and Tony’s position is altered in the video. He starts the statement leaning back and suddenly ends up leaning forward and three inches to the left without ever actually moving from his original position. One second he is sitting back, the next he is sitting forward and to the left. It does not take him long to locate the missing piece of video but when he hears the missing chunk he frowns.

_“That’s what I need your help with actually. T’Challa is pretty convinced I’ve been framed and I damn well know I’ve been framed. But I have no idea who framed me or how they could have even pulled this off considering how suspicious literally everyone here is. Seriously, they barely let jujubes into the country let alone murderers.”_

_“Then someone in the country was in on it.”_

_“Tell them that. I can guarantee it will go over horribly however obvious that seems to me. I’ve left that for T’Challa to figure out on his own, or the Dora Milaje, whichever figures it out first...”_

So both Pepper and Tony have come to the conclusion that someone else here was in on the death of the king but the way Tony phrased his words suggested that he was not keeping the information from them exactly, he simply did not want to rock the boat so-to-speak. And he assumes that T’Challa and the Dora Milaje will come to the same conclusion, which means he does not have much to hide, he is simply waiting for himself and his guards to catch up. If this is the case, and it likely was, than why delete the video?

He calls Okoye in to see what she thinks because she is absolutely trustworthy. They have known each other a long time and he knows that Okoye is more than loyal, even if she does have a problem with omegas and is unwilling to admit it to him.

“There is no way that Stark deleted anything,” she tells him with obvious certainty.

“It would not do well to underestimate him, Okoye, the man is a genius and he has survived a lot,” T’Challa points out. That was part of the reason he was not completely closed to Tony being more involved than he was admitting to. If anyone could have pulled off a plan so smoothly it would be someone like him.

“I am not underestimating him. He is extremely impressive in his ability to create and alter technology but he is not familiar with our systems. It would have taken him time to learn how to break in and I watched both of these calls. There is no way he would have been able to delete that material in the time I left and the time that you watched his previous activity,” she tells him.

“You are certain?” he asks again. He knows she is certain but he wanted to be sure there was absolutely no miscommunication here lest she or someone else try and tell him that his omega brain could not handle basic facts and communication.

“Yes I am certain, is there a point to this?” she asks in an irritated tone.

“There is. If you are certain that he did not tamper with the video and I know you did not tamper with the video than he and his redheaded companion are right. Someone from inside he country must have had something to do with the death of my father. Why else would something so innocuous have been altered? And not very well might I add, almost as if someone was rushing to get the job done.” The problem with that was that there were not very many Dora Milaje that would be so sloppy and they were the only ones who had access to this room or even knew that this room existed…

“Or you deleted it,” Okoye says and T’Challa’s head snaps up.

“ _Excuse_ me?” he asks sharply, “I hardly see how _I_ would have motivation to erase evidence only to bring the erased evidence directly to you so I could blame someone else for it. That is convoluted and serves no purpose.”

“You have liked Tony since the beginning, I understand that-”

“Oh do not insult me with this! Of course I like Tony, but I love my father and I would _never_ insult his memory by ignoring or covering evidence that pointed to who killed him! Since when does Wakanda ignore emotions at all hmm? We are all very connected; we consider emotion near all of the time so why does my being emotionally invested become a problem for you? And are you _not_ emotionally invested in the death of your king? This is Wakanda, not America; we do not think that objectivity does not involve emotions unless, of course, it is an omega speaking their piece. I have never dropped the possibility that Tony may be involved in all of this and I do not appreciate you’re subtle insinuation that my omega brain could not _possibly_ set aside my own investment in Tony,” he snaps. More than that Tony was invested in him too, which he has been using to his advantage not that anyone else even knew about that. Or considered it honestly.

“That is not what I meant, I did not even bring up your status!” Okoye protests.

“You did not need to because you have never once made this assumption of my father and you have never once told him to stop being emotionally invested in the cases he has been involved in. Unless you plan on travelling back in time and telling him to _not_ be emotionally invested in who killed his first and second wife than I would suggest you do not insult me by telling me I should suddenly stop feeling. That is how mistakes are made.” He has seen how ignoring emotions caused too many problems too many times to count. B’Tumba ignored his jealousy and subtle assumptions that T’Challa should not be naturally talented and intelligent because he is an omega and it destroyed their relationship. Then he went and joined an outlier Wakandan political party dedicated to returning the country back to what it used to be. Which was nothing good really- Wakanda has a rather harsh history with several different groups and T’Challa for one was happy that they were past that now.

Point being that emotions and considering them was necessary. Yes, he was obviously invested in Tony and he did not want him to be guilty but that did not mean he got to ignore evidence of tampering on his part if it were to show up. Which was why he called Okoye in to confirm his own thoughts and feelings- he knew he was biased and he wanted to make sure that he was seeing things clearly. Unfortunately all that got him was assumptions about his omega status. Okoye, for her part, looks upset with herself and so she should. “I am going to talk to Tony,” he tells her and with that he leaves.

*

When Tony opens the door he looks shaken and pale, “you found something,” T’Challa says immediately, not realizing that Tony might not _actually_ know that his technology was bugged.

“Nothing to do with T’Chaka but yes, I did find something,” Tony says and he steps back. He appears to be holding himself together well but T’Challa can see his hands shaking slightly.

“And what was it? You do not look well,” T’Challa says, frowning. Tony was not the shakable type in his experience. He did not look even remotely as shaken when he was being interrogated by the Dora Milage.

Tony gently sits down on his bed and Jujube walks over to him, gently pressing her head to his arm because she knew he was upset. Lovely little feline, she was always there when someone needed it. “I uh… I asked Pepper to look into- oh whatever, you probably already know about all of that. I’m pretty sure my shit is bugged which is honestly some 1984 shit but whatever. Anyways, Pepper snooped in Obi’s computer ad she found this,” Tony says and he hands over a USB stick with what T’Challa assumed was the information the redhead found. He takes the USB from Tony’s grasp and plugs it into Tony’s computer. It was surprisingly well made by Wakandan standards. Technology was an area T’Challa noticed that they were rather ahead in compared to the rest of the world minus Tony, who was not far off from what they had.

He plays the video on the USB and finds a young Tony sitting in a chair looking delirious and confused as people on screen start speaking. “What are they saying?” he asks Tony. He did not understand the language that they were speaking.

“They’re saying that Obadiah didn’t tell them that they were supposed to kill me and my father and that they’re going to keep me because I’m worth more than his price tag,” Tony says in a low voice. T’Challa frowns because it has been some time since this video was shot, he could see the difference between the Tony in the video and the one right in front of him.

“Why did he not just kill you when you got back to America? He has had time,” T’Challa points out. Tony gives him an unimpressed look, “sorry,” he adds.

“Don’t know why he didn’t kill me. Maybe because he realized after the initial stock drop that my ideas were actually good and they’d make more money than weapons so he figured he’d weasel more out of me or something. I… he was like a second father to me,” Tony murmurs. T’Challa wants to say that he appeared to be _exactly_ like Tony’s father given how little he cared but that is insensitive so instead he sits beside Tony and gently places his hand on Tony’s knee.

“Sorry,” he says, “and yes we are watching you but I suspected that you would know right away. And for the record I did not agree with the idea but it was an easy way to prove your innocence. Plus who could resist watching that bad dancing,” he jokes.

Tony snorts a little, “my dancing is not that bad.”

“Not compared to your music. What atrocious noise,” he says, shaking his head. Ugh.

“I am so offended. You came here, watched my surrogate father’s plans to murder me and my actual father via terrorists and then you insult my music? You should go spy on Nat if you want good dancing,” Tony says, gently bumping into him. Jujube, who has curled herself into Tony’s side, is annoyed by the movement and lets him know with a loud meow.

“It is not my fault you lack taste in music. But… is it possible that perhaps your partner was trying to kill you again and somehow… missed?” he asks. It seemed likely enough given that the man went out of his way to kill Tony in such an elaborate way before.

“Not likely. Well, likely, just not that he’d miss. I don’t know if he had anything to do with this but… but I guess it’s possible,” Tony says. He leans into T’Challa more and he takes some small comfort that Tony is at least comfortable enough with him to do this. It was not like he had anyone to lean on even though he needed it, but he was more than happy to help Tony for the time being. Even if it irked him some to have to deal with someone else’s dead father.

“Your… Pepper, is she safe?” he asks. If she was the one who gathered this information it stood to reason that she would be in danger if Obadiah found out that she knew about his attempt to assassinate Tony.

“Pep is fine. She’s on her way to Italy to a house I have there that should be more than enough to keep her safe. JARVIS will throw Obi off for awhile playing stupid until Rhodey can figure something out. God, why is it that disaster follows me around? I’d call it karma if it didn’t keep trying to kill everyone _but_ me,” Tony mumbles. T’Challa wonders if he forgot about the three months of torture, dead father, betrayal from his surrogate father, and whatever other trauma he has suffered. It seemed to him that Tony has paid for his crimes and then some given some of the things he knew of Tony’s past.

“We do not believe in karma here. Sometimes things happen and it is no one’s fault and sometimes the things that happen are entirely a construction of a few individuals. But karma, getting what you give to the world, that cannot possibly exist in a world in which so many innocent people suffer. So we do not believe in it,” he says. He has done nothing to deserve his father’s death, his father did nothing to deserve his own death, but those that were responsible will certainly suffer for their actions against the King.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! I think I'm in the downward swing of this story so this will probs be finished up in like five chapters or less I think. Hopefully less, I have a good idea brewing in my think tank and I don't want to start it without finishing another story because god damn, I've got 3 on the go!
> 
> Anyways, you find out some things this chapter!

Tony wakes up to a call from Rhodey and he groans, “can’t you call at a decent time?” he mumbles into the phone.

Rhodey snorts, “oh screw you Stark, you call me at ass o’clock in the morning on a regular basis so don’t come here with that. You might want to find some Wakandan police or whatever it is they have there because I have some pretty big information,” he says. Tony lets out a thin groan and pulls himself out of bed so he could shuffle off to someone important. Thankfully as soon as he opens the door he finds Okoye standing there, probably guarding his door with was more than a little creepy considering it wasn’t his safety she was looking after.

He holds out the phone to her without really looking and walks back into his room and flops on his bed as soon as she takes it. Rhodey was the real MVP for putting up with his shenanigans this early in the morning because he’d hang up on himself.

*

T’Challa resists the urge to punch something, “you are telling me that you did not notice an entire murder that took place _weeks_ ago that resulted in the original man from Poland being _replaced_? Do you have any idea how big of an oversight that is?” he hisses at Okoye. “How is that even possible?” The security measures were no small endeavor, his father might have been happy to give him away like a cow but he was at least a well-protected cow. The body had not been found until yesterday night but that was irrelevant, all of those measures they put in place to prove that people were who they said they were _failed_.

“This… this should not be possible,” Okoye says, frowning.

“Well it is because the Polish man is the _wrong Polish man_. So I suggest you find out who let him in,” he says harshly.

“You think that one of _us_ let him in?” Okoye asks, clearly offended.

“Do you have a better explanation? Because there is absolutely _no way_ that you would have missed this, none of the Dora Milaje would unless they intentionally overlooked it. So figure it out,” he tells her. Lovely, now he was not safe in his own home due to his _security_ looking to kill the King!

“T’Challa-” Okoye starts but he holds up his hand, effectively shushing her.

“Unless you want two dead Kings on your hands _figure out who let the Polish man in_!” She purses her lips but nods, heading off to figure out who committed treason. This did not mean that he killed the King necessarily but T’Challa highly doubted the events were unrelated. What were the chances someone looking to steal resources from Wakanda by taking the identity of a conveniently murdered Polish diplomat have no involvement with another conveniently murdered King? Basically none was the answer and he was not pleased with all of this.

*

While he did not doubt his investigating abilities T’Challa was not sure that he ever would have caught the responsible party for his father’s murder. These things took time and, as Tony pointed out not long ago, he was ahead of the curve but that did not necessarily mean anything. Being ahead did not mean getting the final result- his father has proved that twice with both of his wives. He located the responsible political group, but never the direct perpetrator. T’Challa has considered that perhaps those were the same people that let the wrong man into the country but the fringe group of Wakandans did not have the political pull or security clearance to pull off such a thing. That belonged only to a select few Dora Milaje, his father, and himself. His father obviously was not the responsible party, nor himself, so that left someone in the Dora Milaje. Okoye was not impressed, and he was certain that she was not convinced that he was right either. They would see.

The Polish man, assuming he was even Polish at all, sits across from T’Challa blank faced. All the time T’Challa has spent thinking about this moment and he was not entirely sure what to do. Murder was high on his list of things he’d _like_ to do but he holds back, unsure if this was the real perpetrator. “I am assuming you know something about the murdered diplomat from Poland at the very least,” he says finally.

“An unfortunate side effect of my plan,” he says and T’Challa raises an eyebrow.

“An unfortunate side effect. Is that what you call murder now?” he asks, head tilted to the side.

“I assume you want to know _why_ I did what I did,” the man says, “motive always seems to interest people”

“I have no interest in why you thought to murder my father, he is dead and that is presumably because of you considering you have all but admitted to the crime. Your motivations will do nothing to make me feel better. I do, however, need the information for my investigative purposes so by all means, explain yourself,” he says in a rude tone.

The man sits back in his seat, “are you aware of Tony Stark’s past?” he asks, tapping his fingers on the table in front of him. The action is only slightly hindered by his handcuffs.

“That is a broad question,” T’Challa says. There was a lot of information in Tony’s past, a lot of things that happened all at once beginning with his mother’s death in his late teens. His father’s murder and his kidnapping, his taking over his father’s company, then the alcoholism and Vanko all happened within the space of a few years. Then there was all of this mess too, and the knowledge that Obadiah had set up his father’s murder and his own too, but the terrorists got greedy and paid for it.

“With weapons, you know he sold them right?” he asks.

“I also know that he fell victim to his own creations and realized the power he had been abusing. Not many people would have come out of that with his conclusion,” T’Challa says. He knew from experience that people did not like their worldview to be challenged let alone completely rewritten. In the not so distant past he went through a rather awful friendship end with his long time best friend B’Tumba, who was not fond that T’Challa challenged near every assumption he had about omegas. T’Challa hadn’t even been aware that he had a bias against them, likely due to his looking past all the obvious signs. He did not want to change his own assumptions either. In the end it was disastrous for them both.

“What does a change of opinion matter when the damage is already done?” the man asks. “Nothing. My family is dead because of him; I don’t care what caused him to change his mind. His falling victim to his own weapons is poetic justice.”

“And you killed my family in the process of failing to avenge your own, what kind of poetic justice do you think you’ve earned?” he asks.

*

“Wait, wait, wait, back up. _Where_ did you say this guy was from originally?” Tony asks.

“Slovakia. Apparently you had weapons there, they killed his family and he set out to kill you. My father got caught in the cross fire,” T’Challa says.

“None of that adds up. We weren’t even remotely close to the same area in the house, how the hell could he have accidentally bombed T’Chaka instead of me? Not to mention that I have never had weapons in Slovakia, the country is overrun by terrorists. I might not have had much moral fiber then but I sure as hell didn’t sell weapons to _terrorists_. And how the hell did he get to Poland to fake being a Polish diplomat? And how the _hell_ did no one notice _that_?” he asks. Way too much stuff didn’t add up here and he didn’t like it.

“He claims someone moved the bomb but I am not certain I believe that. As for how he got to Poland- he claimed refugee status and immigrated, then he began plotting his revenge against you. Smart man too, this was the perfect opportunity. Frame you for the murder of a foreign king, send you to jail, or have you suffer the death penalty. He barely had to get his own hands dirty,” T’Challa notes, looking pained to admit such a thing.

“Well, except murdering the Polish diplomat. And somehow fooling the Dora Milaje,” Tony points out. “Still doesn’t explain how he pulled this off.” All that trouble had with _jujubes_ and this asshole fakes being an entire _person_ without an issue. Wakanda needed to get its shit together.

“One of the Dora Milaje had to know, there was no way that none of them knew about this. And Zemo claims he did not murder the Polish diplomat, just that he stole the man’s identity. I believe he has a partner that is covering his tracks,” T’Challa says.

Tony thinks over things for a moment to try and get things straight. “Okay, Slovakian guy’s family gets murdered via my weapons, he blames me and claims refugee status in Poland. Okay. Then he somehow manages to fake a diplomat’s identity doing god knows what with said diplomat, but then he comes to Wakanda to murder me. That’s convoluted but makes some sense considering I’d be without my usual security detail and isolated in an unfamiliar place. Then he somehow fucks up, kills the king, the Polish diplomat he didn’t kill shows up dead in a hotel room, and he supposedly didn’t do any of that. Oh, and some of the Dora Milaje knew about this the whole time and were surprised that the king showed up dead,” he says.

Yeah, okay that was a bit much. But he’d have to hand it to the guy for making a plan that complicated and only ending up implicated because someone else screwed up and some comment T’Chaka made shortly before his death to T’Challa. That left a few things undone though, like who was this Zemo’s partner and who were the Dora Milaje who let him in? And what were the Dora Milaje looking to accomplish? They probably didn’t want him dead even if they didn’t particularly like him. They sure as hell didn’t want their king dead; Tony has seen the reactions T’Chaka’s death was brining about in the country. Political leaders were way more important to Wakanda than America. He couldn’t imagine crying over the president’s death, shit, he couldn’t even imagine doing much more than wonder who did it.

So the Dora Milaje, they had to have some other goal with this whole thing. “This is making my head hurt,” Tony mumbles.

“That makes two of us. Now I cannot even trust my own damn security and that was the only thing I _did_ trust. I have faith in Okoye but that is mostly because she agreed with my father’s decision to open the country up to the rest of the world so she lacks the motivation most of the rest of the Dora Milaje have. And I have known her since I was a child- she would not have an easy time hiding things from me,” T’Challa says. Tony sure as fuck hoped that T’Challa was more observant than he was because he didn’t notice his fucking business partner tried to kill him for years and only found out when investigating some other guy’s murder.

*

Wakandan culture was not exactly displayed for the alphas that came here to court T’Challa and now… now it was hard to imagine choosing anyone but Tony. He was too wrapped up in this to not understand, and he also lost his father suddenly in an explosion. They had common ground he would never find with anyone else. So he chose to share something, a small thing, of his culture with Tony. He looks impressed with the cave and in T’Challa’s not so humble opinion he should. Hundreds of years of history were on these walls- so much history that it was impossible to miss the change of tone when you walked in.

“What is this place?” Tony finally asks, his gaze stopping at the small [waterfall](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d9/7e/19/d97e19c2f3bc5634cc9a680a2d18d5ff.jpg) flowing into the cave.

“This is a place of Kings, when they are still alive anyways. My father used to take me here but I did not understand his lessons until I took up the responsibility of King myself,” he says. And with it the responsibility of the Black Panther, but he leaves that out for now.

“That’s a lot of panthers,” Tony notes, scanning the walls again.

“Panthers are important to us,” T’Challa says. They were precious, like smaller and less powerful versions of Bast walking around and that was not even taking into account how regal the animal was. Panthers tended to roam wherever they wanted to be and T’Challa has been lucky enough to see the animals frequently. They never approached but animals were not fond of humans and panthers were not different. The fact that he had seen the stealthy animal at all was impressive.

“Yeah I can tell, half of these paintings are people wearing panthers or they’re like… part panther or something. Feel free to tell my what I’m looking at,” Tony adds, looking over his shoulder at T’Challa.

“I told you, this is a place of Kings. This is our history laid out on these walls- the panthers are to symbolize the other mantle I have taken up as King. The role of the Black Panther is to protect the country, literally back in our more… primitive days. Today the role is more political and legal- there is always at least one extremist political group floating around trying to disrupt things and it is my job to get rid of them,” he says. He had been lucky that thus far there has been little fuss from fringe groups that he knows must be _dying_ to take over. There were plenty of people that were not pleased about having an omega in charge- even most of the news outlets seemed to dislike him. They had no reason to but he did not expect reason out of bigots- being unreasonable is how they function. That did not mean he had to like it though.

“Isn’t that what the king would do anyways?” Tony asks.

“Is that what your government does?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Depends on what political group you are so I’d say ehhhh,” Tony says, waving a hand around.

T’Challa snorts, “that is accurate at least. Black Panther is more symbolic than functional now- fringe groups are rather easy to get rid of. Wakanda does not particularly like political unrest, too much bad history with it. But the need for a symbol of protection remains and so does the mantle.” And all the training that went with it. The title might be more symbolic that not but the Black Panther was still a warrior, a fighter, and so he learned to fight. He was naturally good at it too, his ability to figure out how people move and fight against it was impressive or so he has been told. But there were things Tony did not need to know about him at the moment and his knowledge on how to kill a man in several different ways with his bare hands was one of those things.

“Yeah, you guys really don’t like political unrest. You have one hell of a complicated voting system,” Tony says.

“That is because each area of Wakanda has different interests due to different environments. We try to accommodate everyone but that is not as easy as it sounds on paper,” he says.

“Yeah? How so? Because the public is involved in basically everything you do, seems like people have a lot of say in how things get run,” Tony points out.

He nods because that is true, and why people were so connected to their King. It was the King’s duty, along with his council and other advisors, to connect with the people in the deepest way possible to ensure that everyone was being heard. That did not work out as nicely in real life as it did on paper. “Our voting system assumes that people are not biased, that they truly want equality for all. That is not true at all and had I been born just a little earlier in history I would not have been allowed to take on the role of King and certainly not the role of Black Panther. The people voted it that way on purpose, actually I am the first King that is an omega and the first Black Panther too. It is not accident that I am receiving unfair criticisms and backlash because of it. I am blessed to have been born in this time in history nonetheless.”

Tony frowns, “people _voted_ to continue to oppress omegas?” he asks as if this was some sort of surprise to him.

“So did your country until rather recently. Though Wakanda is technically behind by American standards as far as omega rights go. My father was the one who made a push for the unfair laws around omegas to be removed, and before I was born at that. He was subject to a lot of unfair criticisms himself when he was young- namely that he was far too radical. This was not helped by my grandfather, who was extremely conservative. It was a bit of a political whiplash, which he repeated not long ago with his decision to push the country back into the rest of the world. He will likely be remembered as a radical, but a positive one at least.” His grandfather did not have one such fate, his rule was regarded as tyranny thanks to the work his father did to combat prejudice.

“Okay fair point. So you’re the first omega hmm, how’s it feel to make history? I think it’s kind of fun,” Tony says, grinning. Yes, T’Challa supposed he has made history himself a few times in his young life. His business alone was reason to raise an eyebrow, but his work in the technological field was extremely impressive.

“I rather like my place in history. I will do my best to be remembered fondly, though if the media has anything to say about it that will not happen,” he says. He was sure that as soon as the information that he just found was released there would be some other thing to complain about. Something else that he missed, or how he still had not solved the case completely even if he did find the perpetrator, at least in part.

“Fuck the media, they’re assholes. Question though, if this is a place of kings than what am I doing here?” he asks.

T’Challa grins because this was one of his favorite things about Tony; he noticed things others might overlook. “This is also a place for the King’s mate, if you will have me,” he says.

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “well I uh… this is not al all how I imagined any proposals for marriage in my life going. To be honest I would have expected a lot more alcohol, a bad Elvis impersonator, and a divorce twenty-three days later but… yeah ok. Why not?”

“To be honest the last thing I expected was any of this so we are both surprised. Though I would rather there not be a divorce twenty-three days after marriage and I would also prefer a long engagement. I can afford to do that now, which is nice, and it gives us both time to back out if need be for whatever reason,” he says. More like it was time for _Tony_ to back out because he was quite sure, he has been since the beginning he just was not willing to admit that to himself.


	11. Chapter 11

Tony couldn’t believe he was fucking _engaged_ now. There was a lot he expected out of his life on principal- he was rich, pretty, and the CEO if a multibillion-dollar company. Life being good for him was expected minus the child abuse, absentee mother, father figure who tried to kill him via terrorists, father dying at the hands of said terrorists, getting tortured by those terrorists himself, and then getting framed for murder by some angry fake Polish dude. That was only a little bit of suffering though, it happens, but still. He was _engaged_ now. To the _Wakandan King_ for shit sakes.

“Congratulations,” Rhodey says when Tony calls with the news, “how badly are you freaking out?” he adds a moment later.

“You know me well, honeybee, _what the fuck was I thinking_ ,” he hisses, momentarily forgetting that he was still probably under surveillance.

“As usual you weren’t, platypus,” Rhodey croons in an almost mocking tone.

“Screw you man, what the hell do I do?” he asks, one hand gripping his phone hard while the other pulled absently at his hair.

“Get married. Look, I know you aren’t good at these things but do you know how many people you’ve put all your resources out for?” Rhodey asks, making Tony frown because that question was way off base.

“Uh, no? Does that matter?” he asks. He used his resources to help people all the time, or he tried to after that whole weapons sales thing. Zemo or whatever his name was proved that his sales had real and terrible effects on people even if he still had no idea how his weapons got there to begin with.

“Yeah Tones it does, because that number totals to three,” Rhodey says.

“It does not, I help way more people with me resources than that! Just because you don’t know about my charity work doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You’re sounding an awful lot like one of those news sources that would condemn me for not spreading my resources around while also condemning me for only doing charity work for show,” Tony says, offended at Rhodey’s blatant lie. Also screw new paper reporters who didn’t know how to use Google.

“Not the question I asked, Tones. I asked how many people you’ve put out _all_ your resources for. That answer is three- you’ve done that for Pepper a few times, me obviously, and now T’Challa. You want to know how I knew Pepper was in it with you for the long run? She ran into travel trouble somewhere, I can’t remember where now, and you got yourself out of a bar and went and dealt with it. In those days anything that distracted you from a drink was impressive,” Rhodey says, sounding almost impressed and Tony sighs. He hadn’t handled his mom’s death well and no one cared if you were underage when you were rich enough to keep their noses to themselves. His father hit the bottle pretty hard too; hard enough that he stopped hitting Tony.

When he wasn’t drunk he was trying to build something new and world shattering to impress his father, who never really was impressed with anything he did. Or at least that Tony knew of when the man was alive. There was that fucking tape he got the year after Howard was killed in the height of his alcoholism and Vanko issue but he burned it using Howard’s preferred scotch as the fuel. He’s regretted it several times over by now.

“I didn’t know that,” he says eventually to Rhodey, who seemed to be waiting for a response.

“Of course not, you don’t pay attention to these things, Pep and I do that for you. So stop freaking out, if nothing else you will definitely keep in contact with him for a long time. You don’t throw yourself into things like this unless you plan on being there for the long haul,” Rhodey points out.

“Okay but like, I was framed for murder, it makes sense to throw in my all to prove my own innocence,” he says. That meant Rhodey was totally wrong.

“So? This isn’t the first time you’ve been framed for murder and the last two times your dumb ass assumed your innocence would prove itself. I love you man, but that was stupid.” He can almost see Rhodey’s ‘are you kidding me Stark?’ face now, or maybe the ‘what did I do in a past life to get stuck with your ass’ face.

“Right. I forgot about that…” he says.

“Only in the life of Tony Stark could you get framed for murder _twice_ and forget about it,” Rhodey mumbles and Tony _knows_ he’s shaking his head. It wasn’t his fault he had a very ugh… lively life.

*

Pepper calls him shortly after Rhodey hangs up and Tony thinks about letting it go to voicemail because he’s curled up with T’Challa and he smells good. But it might be important so he reaches across T’Challa and grabs his phone, grinning when T’Challa throws an arm around him. “Yeah?” he says into the phone in way of a greeting. This was Pepper; she knew what he was like.

“Are you sitting down?” Pepper says and Tony freezes because those were the same words Obi had said when he called about his mother’s car accident. T’Challa notices the difference in body language right away and frowns at him.

“Just spit it out Pepper,” he tells her.

“Well I don’t want you to… faint or some-”

“ _Now_ , Pepper,” he says in a more commanding tone. This gets another frowns from T’Challa, though this one looks more offended than not.

“Fine, I was going through some things regarding the terrorist thing with Obi with JARVIS, making sure we had enough to make the charges stick no matter what and uh… we found something else. Actually two things,” she says.

Tony shifts so that he’s sitting up again and puts her on speakerphone, getting the feeling that this was about to be relevant to T’Challa. “Go ahead then, tell me what you found,” he says.

“Rhodey called me about your… what the hell was his name?”

“Zemo,” T’Challa says.

“Yeah, him, so I had JARVIS flag the name and Slovakia. Well, we found a connection and then some. He’s been selling weapons under the table, Tony, to _terrorists_. That’s why there were weapons in Slovakia to begin with, and we’re working on how they made contact but we have a pretty long trail of conversations between your Zemo and Obadiah planning this whole murder. Your murder, he wasn’t planning on killing the King,” Pepper adds.

“There’s the partner you were looking for,” Tony mumbles. “Great. Got enough to make an arrest? And while you’re at it make sure there’s some sort of weapon recall. He must be selling what I pulled back when I closed that portion of the company.” He swears under his breath and silently curses whoever had him show up in Wakanda at this exact moment because Obadiah was _fucked_ when he got home. Selling weapons was bad, but selling weapons to _terrorists_? Absolutely fucking not- Tony was going to make sure Obadiah paid for this _dearly_ when he got back.

“Already on it, sir,” JARVIS informs him.

“You’re awesome, anyone told you that lately? You too Pep,” he adds maybe a little too late.

“I can’t believe you just complimented you AI before me. And as for Obadiah’s arrest, I’m watching a live feed of that happening right now. At the very least he’s going down for Howard’s murder, your kidnapping, and treason. I’ll do my best to make sure he gets his comeuppance for his involvement in T’Chaka’s death too but that one might be more difficult to stick,” Pepper says. Yeah, considering he was planning on killing _Tony_ , not the King.

“No worries Mrs. Potts, the charges will hold,” T’Challa says in a clear, commanding tone. Tony winces, knowing how hard this must be for T’Challa to hear. Tony briefly thanks Pepper and asks her to keep him updated before hanging up.

“I’m so sorry T’Challa,” he says genuinely.

“This is not your fault,” T’Challa says.

“Yeah, except it is. If I hadn’t come here none of this would have happened,” Tony points out.

T’Challa shakes his head, “you forget that someone here knew what was going on too. Something like this would have happened whether or not you were here as the catalyst,” T’Challa says, jaw clenching in a mix of anger and upset. Tony gently presses his hand into T’Challa’s, silently offering his support.

*

It couldn’t have been helped really, Tony _panicked_ and this was just the best method of dealing with things.

T’Challa fumbles with the box for a moment before catching it, frowning at the velvet. “Rings are an American thing,” Tony explains. Rings weren’t a thing in Wakanda and he only recently figured out the name change thing. Wakandan tradition said that he, if he were a woman, would take T’Challa’s first name as his last name. They didn’t really have a policy for same sex couples, they just sort of did whatever with their names but had paperwork indicating that they were, in fact, in a legally recognized marriage.

“Rings?” T’Challa asks, opening the box and raising an eyebrow. “How did you even find this?” he asks.

“I pestered Okoye for six hours straight to let me leave the property and then proceeded to annoy her into being my translator. Told her she didn’t want to disappoint the king,” Tony says. Not his finest moment but it was either that or look like a damn tool when he explained the ring thing so.

“You… annoyed and then manipulated Okoye into helping you? Did she choose the ring?” he asks.

Tony presses his hand to his heart, offended. “No! Typically in America the guy picks the ring but since we’ve got twin dongs and your culture doesn’t do rings I figured that meant I had to go do it. And panthers are important to you and all that and I liked the ring so uh, there. You have a ring,” Tony says, flapping his hands around. It took him forever to find the damn thing too so he hoped that T’Challa actually liked the panther ring. He thought it was cool but for all he knew he was being culturally insensitive somehow without knowing it. Everyone in that little store had looked pretty surprised when he picked up the ring.

“You have no clue what this is do you?” T’Challa asks, smiling slowly, his eyes twinkling.

“Uh…. Hopefully nothing offensive? Because if it’s offensive I’m blaming Okoye, she should know this stuff and-”

“Tony, this kind of ring is blessed by our gods, theoretically you should not have been able to pick it up. Please, in great detail tell me what Okoye’s face looked like when you picked this up,” he says, grin growing wider.

“Oh. Well I’m not much of a believer so whatever. And Okoye looked pretty shocked, and then pissed. She refused to speak to me after that and I guess I was right in assuming it was because I chose well and she was mad about it. So what does this blessing or whatever mean?” he asks. He’s curious more than anything, not that he’d believe whatever hocus pokus T’Challa told him. It was still a neat thing to know about he supposed.

“A ring like this is only meant to be touched by those worthy of Bast’s love. I suppose at least she approves of you,” T’Challa says softly, hand hovering over the ring for a moment like he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to touch it or however the blessing worked. But he reaches into the box and pulls the ring out, sighing a breath of relief when he picks the ring up with no issues.

Tony walks towards him as he examines the pretty ring, “you _do_ know that’s just a hunk of metal, right?” he asks.

The comment earns him a dirty look from T’Challa, “do I insult your culture?” he asks.

“No, but-”

“Then do not insult mine. I cannot believe Bast let someone who does not even believe in her touch the ring,” he mumbles, shaking his head. Tony, because he’s an ass and because he wants to prove T’Challa wrong, reaches out to touch the ring and jumps when the damn thing _shocks_ him.

“Ow!” he says, cradling his sore hand.

T’Challa grins, “aha, the truth is out. Bast led you to the ring so you could bring it back to me because _I_ am worthy,” he says, snickering when Tony reaches out to touch the ring only to get shocked again.

“God damn it, for a second there I thought I had bragging rights to some random Wakandan god liking me. How are you even supposed to touch me with that thing on?” he asks, concerned for himself as always.

“I thought you did not believe in Bast,” T’Challa says, ribbing him lightly.

“I don’t, but if the ring is going to shock me if I’m near it for _scientific_ reasons than I want to know how to fix it,” he says, glaring at the stupid ring in question.

“This is probably because you threw it at my head instead of giving me a real proposal. I take you to an ancient place of my people and you toss a blessed ring at my head. I think I have the better proposal unless throwing rings at your mate’s head is an American thing? Please tell me that it is not, that would be ridiculous,” T’Challa says, wrinkling his nose.

“It isn’t. And I didn’t _throw_ it, it slipped,” Tony says in his own defense, nose in the air.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, only one more chapter left!

T’Challa presses his face into Tony’s neck, half curled around the man given that he was taller. It was strange to T’Challa that Tony did not seem uncomfortable with that- in his own culture omegas were expected to be demure and size was part of that. Perhaps in America that was not a popular idea or maybe Tony simply did not care.

“Tell me about America,” he says, curious about what Tony thought of his country. T’Challa had his own thoughts about the country and its political history but he did not live there, he was sure Tony had plenty of thoughts on Wakanda too, but context mattered. It was difficult to have proper context when you were not exposed to the culture for a long period of time.

“Uh… god, I don’t know. We like guns and explosions and things that are really, really big for no other reason than their large size. Like Texas. For context Wakanda is barely larger than Texas,” Tony says and T’Challa frowns.

“ _What_? That is _huge_. And I already gathered that your country likes guns and explosions. Explain the big things though, that does not make sense to me.” A lot of things about America, from what he has heard, did not make sense to him but the big things were new. Aside from America’s apparent ego he had no idea that things were… bigger in America.

“Yeah… used to be not so fond of gun laws but then I got attacked by terrorists and now think they’re necessary but that’s probably because of like… PTSD. Anyways. Yeah, so there’s this joke abut everything being bigger in Texas and- you know what, I have the _perfect_ explanation for everything America give me a minute,” Tony says, slipping off the bed with no regards to where T’Challa’s falling onto the pillow to go grab something.

Two hours and one dreadful movie later T’Challa decides that America did not seem very pleasant. “So… America is cars and misogyny?” he asks, frowning as the credits roll on Tony’s laptop.

Tony considers this for a moment and shrugs, “basically. But the cars are _cool_ and things _explode_ and there are _cool cars_!” Tony says, acting as if this made the film less terrible.

“That was… the worst movie I have every seen,” T’Challa says honestly, shaking his head.

He does not anticipate Tony looking deeply offended, “ _excuse_ you? Who doesn’t like The Fast And The Furious? This is a great franchise, there are _cool exploding cars_ T’Challa!” Tony waves his heads around like this demonstrated his point but T’Challa remains confused.

“People who have taste,” T’Challa says.

“Fine, you find me a better movie,” Tony sniffs, nose in the air. Little does he know T’Challa could pull out the worst movie in Wakandan history and it would be better than _that_ garbage but he has a movie in mind. Most unfortunately for Tony he does not turn out to be a fan of the horror genre, but his loud shrieks were amusing until Okoye showed up.

*

Tony is trying- and failing- to beat Natasha in a game of poker when he hears the news. Well, more accurately he _sees_ the news when a swarm of Dora Milaje all but run past the door to the library. He and Natasha get up to investigate only to have the door shut in their faces. “You guys are very untrustworthy, you know!” he yells at the shut door.

“To be fair they _did_ think you killed the king,” Natasha says.

“But I _didn’t_ kill the king and they proved that _I_ was the actual target all along so I feel like I’ve earned a little bit of trust. Or at least some common courtesy,” he mumbles, glaring at the shut door.

“Pretty sure not slamming the door _on_ your face was courtesy enough to them. Now get back here so I can win at cards,” Natasha says, sitting back down at the small table they were playing on. Tony reluctantly goes but he’s distracted so Natasha takes the win far easier than she would have if he hadn’t been distracted. Usually he counted cards but his mind kept wandering back to T’Challa and what he was dealing with right now. Tony assumes that he found the parties responsible for interfering with the investigation and letting that Polish- _Slovakian_ \- guy into the country.

That couldn’t be easy and Tony knew what it was like. There was that whole Obi fiasco and he had no idea how he didn’t see it coming. In hindsight it was pretty obvious now that he knew. “You’re distracted,” Natasha says and Tony blinks back into focus, shaking his head a little.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says agreeably. It wasn’t false, and he felt he had the right to be distracted given the circumstances. And god even knew when he would be let out of here and if he’d even be allowed anywhere near T’Challa.

“You know I’ve done a lot of research on you and you don’t seem like the touchy feely type,” Natasha says, head tilted to the side a little.

“I’m not.” Never has been either, Howard made sure that his ability to empathize was at a near zero early on. Truth be told he never has known how to express his emotions right and it never seemed to work out well for him. Exhibit A- his alcoholism.

“Maybe in the past but I don’t see much evidence for that now. You care about T’Challa, about what’s going on here- I don’t think you would have two years ago,” Natasha says. Tony snorts, Tony didn’t care about _anything_ two years ago, himself included.

“Yeah well, I left a lot to be desired then, still do honestly. And yeah I care about T’Challa- I should, we’re fucking engaged. I don’t even know how that happened.” Typical Tony Stark shenanigans he guessed. Go to a country with no intention on doing much of anything except for exploring the history of tech and a dash of culture, end up marrying the king. God, that was so him.

“I’m not certain he knows how that happened either but you two are good together. You have a lot of chemistry and I think he does a good job balancing out… _you_. And you do a good job understanding him, I didn’t expect that,” Natasha says.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“I mean you’re an emotionally and socially stunted twit. I mean I love you but it’s true. I didn’t expect you to make such a full and… I don’t know, genuine contribution to his life.” Natasha shrugs and Tony is offended because _ouch_.

“Excuse you, I am a wonderful and fulfilling person fuck you very much. And it’s nice that you love me, but I don’t even like you,” he says. The comment is more to be a petty ass than anything because he knew what Natasha meant. He didn’t expect to make a contribution to T’Challa’s life either, certainly not a meaningful one.

Natasha throws the deck of cards at him, “scre you, Stark,” she says but she’s smiling, which is rare for the Russians so Tony figured it’s real. Either that or she was bearing her teeth at him and he was about to die.

*

T’Challa looked like death warmed over and Tony doesn’t know what to do aside from sit beside him and gently rub his back feeling like a tit on a log. “What happened?” he asks eventually. He isn’t sure if it’ll help at all but at this point he doubted he could make it worse.

“The plan was to kill you- to frighten my father back into keeping Wakanda separate from the world by proving that outsiders are dangerous and only bring destruction. Unfortunately others had… _different_ ideas of what should happen. You know the rest, obviously. And I should have noticed, Nakia had been acting strange throughout this whole thing, it was _obvious_ ,” T’Challa says, shaking his head sharply.

“Noticing when people close to you are acting odd and plotting against you isn’t easy, T’Challa. take it from a guy who has worked with a man who plotted _twice_ extensively to kill him and didn’t even notice. Sometimes we only see what we want to because it’s easier and sometimes that’s even okay, necessary even. So don’t beat yourself up because you wanted to believe that someone outside of what is by all means a tight knit country killed your father. You might want to seriously evaluate your security though,” Tony says, putting that last point out gently. It wasn’t something that he wanted to say but it was necessary in light of recent events.

“That is already being handled for what I consider obvious reasons. Okoye insists she has found all the traitors but she was blinded too. And I also want her evaluated. As it turns out Natasha is qualified for that job and I am learning that sometimes the perspective of an outsider can be useful. Thank you, by the way, for being so supportive. That was not called for,” he says.

Tony wraps an arm around T’Challa’s shoulders and pulls him close, “of course it was. No one else here looked willing to support you and _god_ do I know what it’s like to go through something like this alone. I even had my father’s legacy to live up to too, except my father sucked so it was cool if I scrapped all of that. You aren’t so lucky- T’Chaka was a good man and you needed space to process what happened. I don’t mind being that space,” he says. God knows he could have used that himself. Pepper and Rhodey were busy people with their own lives, he couldn’t expect them to drop everything for him because he needed a lot more than either of them knew. And Obi… well he had been the one to try to kill Tony off so his lack of support was obvious.

For a long few moments they just sit there, T’Challa half curled into Tony’s side with Tony’s arm around him. This… wasn’t the sort of thing Tony ever would have seen for himself though to be fair dating the Prince-turned-King of Wakanda after the tragic death of the previous king sounded way to dramatic for real life. But it was nice though, and being T’Challa’s shoulder to lean on was even nicer much to his surprise. It never really occurred to him until now that no one seemed to trust him with their emotional problems and that was probably for good reason, but he liked that T’Challa did. He just had to make sure he didn’t go screwing it up.

“I am taking a leave of absence- the one I was entitled to take before this mess started. If… if you do not mind I would like to spend it with you. It would do me well to go somewhere else to process my grief,” T’Challa says.

“Of _course_. But just so you know America _is_ as wonderfully obnoxious as The Fast And The Furious,” Tony warns, earning a long sigh from T’Challa. Tony grins though, because going home would be nice and he was more than happy to have T’Challa tag along. It would be a decent time to actually get to know each other almost free from distractions. T’Challa wasn’t going to have an easy time Tony knew, grief was difficult and it would be a lot harder without the distraction of investigating who killed the king. Tony has his own issues to attend to as well though, like everything with Obi, SI, and making sure Pepper was okay after her near dangerous run in with Obi. He figures that if T’Challa needed him he would say something and Tony would be more than happy to help him out when needed. Sometimes a distraction from his own problems would be nice too.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not totally sure about how I ended this but whatever, it's done! This is the first time in awhile I've had a story come out this short in a long time too. Wow!

Tony looks around his yard, horrified. “T’Challa, _how_ did you get this many cats here?” he asks, looking at all the cats currently surrounding his Malibu house.

“I planted cat nip,” he says, petting the several cats that have crawled into his lap, looking pleased. It was a nice change to his sluggishness but Tony knew what it was like to suddenly not have a goal after a parent died. It was weird because when Howard died he barely even felt it, but after he got out of those caves oh boy… He thought he outran the grieving process and instead he ended up staving it off for a time and by the time he realized he hadn’t dealt with Howard’s death at all he was an alcoholic. At least T’Challa’s overindulgence was in _cats_ instead of substance abuse and Jujube could use a friend. _This many_ friends, though… not so much.

“T’Challa we can’t keep all these cats, this is an illegal amount of cats,” Tony says. There had to be at least thirty cats in his yard, probably more.

“An illegal amount of cats is the perfect amount of cats,” T’Challa says, grinning at the cats.

“An illegal amount of cats means fees,” Tony says.

“We are both rich, and besides, do you really think someone will look the King of Wakanda dead in the and tell him to get rid of the cats? I doubt it,” he says. Tony sighs and accepts that he just acquired an uncomfortable amount of pets.

*

Pepper and T’Challa get along well, which Tony was more than a little grateful for because if they hadn’t gotten along he would have had no clue what to do. Pepper had good people sense, if she didn’t like T’Challa something had to be wrong with him. She hadn’t liked Obi and she was right about him. But they got along well, and they both had an inexplicable fondness for tea that Tony didn’t understand. Though in their defense he basically lived off coffee.

“You two get along well,” Pepper tells him as they pour over more goddamn paperwork from when Tony was away. They had barely even started on all the crap from Obi too, though Pepper hired an assistant for that. She was supposed to meet them later or something like that, Tony hadn’t been paying attention. He only needed to know what _his_ assistant was doing.

“I should hope so, we’re engaged. I am happy with him though; we understand a lot of things about each other that most others don’t. And he smells really good,” Tony says, grinning dopily at the memory of T’Challa’s scent.

Pepper shakes her head, “you alphas, always thinking with your noses,” she says.

“Do not. We have lots of other things in common too, I’m just saying, he smells amazing. Its an objective fact,” Tony says in his own defense.

“Next time I see him I’m asking him how many IQ points you lose when you scent him,” Pepper says, laughing when Tony makes an offended noise. He didn’t lose _any_ IQ points! That stupid-alphas-can’t-think-past-their-noses thing was a total myth; they can and _did_ think beyond their noses thanks. Tony did it all the time not that he had any choice, his house smelled entirely of his and T’Challa’s scents now, which, _awesome_. It was nice to have him around and he could use the break from his own country, even if he was still pretty involved in the proceedings of his father’s murder case at least.

Shuri called somewhat often concerning various things that needed his opinion or input but it seemed to be less stressful than actively being in the country doing those things so Tony didn’t say anything. Not that it would have mattered to T’Challa anyways, if this was the way he wanted to deal with his grieving period this was the way he’d damn well do it. Unsurprisingly T’Challa caught flack in America too as an omega, but spending time with Tony has upped his sass game and Tony, for one, was _thrilled_ with this. He didn’t feel much threatened by the fact that T’Challa was a person with distinct personality traits that he insisted on keeping whether Tony liked them or not. Personally he found that attractive actually and he had no clue why _any_ alpha would want a stereotypical omega, not that he believed someone that wimpy and weak existed outside of weird fetish heat porn. What a wasted porn category.

“Do you think if we just killed Obi we wouldn’t have to deal with the paperwork?” Tony asks Pepper eventually. He wanted to go home, hang out with T’Challa and watch more bad movies that annoyed T’Challa. They shared absolutely no taste in movies or television- T’Challa hated mindless action and if Tony ever had to watch another horror film ever again he’d do something really embarrassing that he wouldn’t even want to witness himself let alone have T’Challa witness. But _Mean Girls_ had been hilarious if for no other reason than T’Challa being offended at the depiction of Africa. And T’Challa’s love of mysteries, _ugh_ , Tony did not see the appeal at all but T’Challa liked trying to figure things out before the characters. His discovery of American cop dramas had been a very disappointing day for Tony but he watched Criminal Minds with him anyways, but he wasn’t ever telling T’Challa about Sherlock Holmes. Especially not those weird adaptions with that one guy who looked kind of like him and Jude Law.

“Pretty sure murder would mean more paperwork, just not for us,” Pepper says.

“Great, lets kill him,” Tony says excitedly. He had a fiancé to get home to.

“Kill who now?” a familiar voice asks.

Tony turns around and frowns, “ _Natasha_?” he asks, surprised to see the woman here, in SI.

“Natalie,” she corrects with a pleasant smile, “Natalie Rushman. I’m sure we’ll get along just fine,” she says, pleasant smile still on her face.

Tony turns back to Pepper, “just so you know she’s actually a Russian princess named Natasha but she’s legit.” She had run all those psych tests and whatever else T’Challa wanted on the Dora Milaje after all. _Boy_ were they pissed about that but that was what happened when you a couple of you went rouge and killed the king, or in the case of the few that were involved and _didn’t_ know about that they just let the catalyst to the king’s murder.

Zemo was probably not having fun in that Wakandan detention center that T’Challa didn’t say much about. Tony found that telling considering he was horrified with the American prison system- apparently Wakanda’s system looked much more like Scandinavian prison systems. Tony figured detention centers in Wakanda did not function the same way. He would have felt bad with the remaining Dora Milaje that Natasha sniffed out and busted for being involved in either alternative political parties looking to over throw the king, or the murder of the last king but you know, _murder_. He liked T’Challa just where he was, thanks, and he wasn’t looking forward to when their relationship went more long distance.

“Oh god Tony, please work on believable lies. No one would ever believe that,” Pepper tells him, shaking her head.

“But… it’s… that true!” Tony protests as Natasha rounds the table and takes a seat beside Pepper, picking up some random folder to set to work. Pepper ignores him and Natasha just grins, knowing that Pepper was never going to believe him. He sighs and accepts his fate.

*

Tony and T’Challa sit curled on the couch with Jujube stretched out across them. The other cats with the exception of the very cute white one Tony found lurking by the doorway a couple days ago were outside. And no one has said anything about the cats, though he lived on a cliff to be fair. It wasn’t like they were disrupting anyone and they were mostly high on that cat nip all the time. And they were a nice distraction for T’Challa when he was feeling bad or upset about something, especially his father’s death.

“Thank you,” T’Challa murmurs into Tony’s hair.

“I don’t know what you’re thanking me for but Natasha illegally immigrated into America and now she’s Pepper’s assistant and Pepper didn’t believe me when I told her she was actually a Russian princess and her name is Natalia now. Also did she finish examining the Dora Milaje or is that still on going? I need to know because I might hire her to kill Obi so I have less paperwork to deal with,” Tony says. She could probably do it.

“I was thanking you for being so gracious about my grieving. Most would not be so kind, I know this because my country was not impressed when I took time that I was entitled to- which I pointed out of course. And no, technically Natasha is not done with the Dora Milaje, I had her look over some new recruits seems how I cannot trust my own staff. I will go over both her reports and Okoye’s usual reports on the new recruits to make sure that I am not accidentally hiring someone who is plotting my death. I cannot believe this is even necessary,” he mumbles. “But back to you, do not hire Natasha to kill off your previous business partner because you do not want _paperwork_ ,” T’Challa says in a disapproving tone.

Huh, he hadn’t known T’Challa was having Natasha go over the newbies too, he figured that was all Okoye but he supposed she hadn’t noticed that there were traitors working with her so T’Challa had lost faith. To be fair Tony noticed that Okoye lost just enough faith to be just as suspicious of the Dora Milaje as she was of foreigners, which was probably for the best in Tony’s absolutely biased opinion. “No need to thank me for allowing you to grieve, jeeze. That’s normal stuff. We do have to get rid of some of those cats though, there are more and the keep coming because of the damn cat nip. They must be telling their cat friends about it. But back to Obi- come on, he tried to kill me twice, killed my father, sold weapons to terrorists, and left me with a bunch of paperwork and lawsuits. I only want him just a tiny bit murdered, it’s hardly a loss given how crappy a person he is,” Tony says in his defense.

“The cats stay, they are cute and they are homeless, we cannot just _abandon_ them. You are not killing your business partner just to get rid of paperwork though. Subjectively I do not care, he is a horrible man and the world would be better off, but objectively murder is not right. Even if it would leave you with less paperwork. Besides, Natasha is hardly an assassin,” T’Challa points out.

“I’m sure a six figure cheque would change that,” Tony says.

“You are not murdering your business partner, Tony,” T’Challa says in a firm tone.

Tony groans and presses his face into T’Challa’s chest, “but I don’t wanna do all that paperwork. And the _lawsuits_ , he left me a mess and honestly the world isn’t losing much. Also you smell _fantastic_ ,” Tony says, inhaling deeply.

“Stop sniffing me while discussing murder, that is weird. And you smell nice too,” T’Challa says, pressing his nose into Tony’s hair. He’s a lot more subtle about his sniffing but Tony didn’t see the point in that so he huffs in T’Challa’s scent, earning a laugh. “Typical alpha, its always sniffing with you.”

“Okay that is not true, you just smell really good. It’s an objective fact,” Tony says. First Pepper, now T’Challa? Next Natasha was going to agree and then they’d have a real problem.

“You smell nice too but you do not see me huffing you like a drug, do you?” T’Challa says, raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe you should start, I’m cool with that,” Tony tells him, grinning.

“Of course you are,” T’Challa mumbles, “typical alpha.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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